Rankfile

Top 5 cheapest VPS hosting providers in the UK

Five UK virtual servers ranked on what they cost to run for a year, not what the first month advertises. Every price below is the renewal price including VAT, and every speed figure comes from the same benchmark run on the smallest plan each host sells.

Last updated · 5 options compared

  1. Nine Fields

    Cheapest on paper, annual up front

    Best Value
    7.4/10

    The lowest headline figure in the test, with the catch stated plainly: you pay twelve months in advance. Fine for something you know you are keeping, awkward for anything you are still deciding about.

    Pros

    • Lowest headline price of the five
    • UK data centre

    Cons

    • Twelve months payable up front
    • No refunds after seven days

    Features

    • 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB NVMe
    • 1 TB transfer
    Price
    £2.60/mo
    Money-back guarantee
    7 days
    Overall
    7.4
    See the plans

    Annual billing only — the monthly price shown is the yearly total divided by twelve

  2. Kestrel VPS

    8.9/10

    The cheapest server in the test that we would still put a real site on. One core and a gigabyte of memory goes further than it sounds when the storage is NVMe and the network is not oversold.

    Pros

    • Cheapest renewal price in the test
    • Weekly snapshots included, not an add-on
    • Manchester data centre, UK round trips

    Cons

    • Support is email only, business hours
    • One core on the entry plan

    Features

    • 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 25 GB NVMe
    • 2 TB transfer
    • Weekly snapshots
    Price
    £2.75/mo
    Money-back guarantee
    7 days
    Country
    United Kingdom
    Founded
    2019
    Speed
    8.4
    Uptime
    9.0
    Control panel
    8.2
    Security
    8.6
    Features
    7.8
    Support
    7.4
    Value
    9.6
    Overall
    8.9
    See Kestrel plans

  3. Brackenhost

    Cheap, and honest about what that means

    7.8/10

    A no-frills box with a good price and a plain warning on its own signup page that backups are your problem. We would rather that than a promise nobody keeps.

    Pros

    • Second-cheapest renewal here
    • Clear about what is not included

    Cons

    • No backups at any tier
    • Slowest disk in the test

    Features

    • 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 30 GB SSD
    • 2 TB transfer
    Price
    £3.20/mo
    Speed
    7.2
    Uptime
    8.0
    Control panel
    7.6
    Security
    8.2
    Value
    8.6
    Overall
    7.8
    See Brackenhost plans

  4. Thornbury Cloud

    9.1/10

    A pound more than the cheapest and a noticeably better machine: two cores, hourly billing, and the fastest median response of anything in this price bracket.

    Pros

    • Fastest median response in the test
    • Hourly billing, so a test server costs pennies
    • London and Manchester regions

    Cons

    • Backups are a paid add-on
    • Control panel is plain

    Features

    • 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe
    • 3 TB transfer
    • Hourly billing, no minimum term
    Price
    £3.50/mo
    Money-back guarantee
    14 days
    Country
    United Kingdom
    Founded
    2014
    Speed
    9.4
    Uptime
    9.2
    Control panel
    8.8
    Security
    9.0
    Features
    8.6
    Support
    8.2
    Value
    9.2
    Overall
    9.1
    See Thornbury plans

  5. Marlow Systems

    The one with real humans on support

    8.4/10

    Not the cheapest line on the page, but the only host in the test where a support ticket at eleven at night was answered by somebody who read it.

    Pros

    • 24/7 support that answers properly
    • Daily backups kept for 14 days
    • Free migration from another host

    Cons

    • Entry plan is the priciest here
    • No hourly billing

    Features

    • 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 60 GB NVMe
    • 4 TB transfer
    • Daily backups, 14-day retention
    Price
    £6.20/mo
    Money-back guarantee
    30 days
    Speed
    8.8
    Uptime
    9.4
    Control panel
    9.0
    Security
    8.8
    Features
    8.4
    Support
    9.6
    Value
    7.8
    Overall
    8.4
    See Marlow plans

How we ranked them

We rented the entry plan from each host at retail, ran the same benchmark script for seven days, and recorded the renewal price rather than the promotional one. Cheap is only cheap if it stays cheap in month thirteen.

Speed is a median of hourly runs, not a best case. Uptime is what we measured over the week, which is too short to be a guarantee and long enough to catch a host having a bad time.

Common questions

Is the cheapest VPS ever the right choice?
If the workload is a side project, a staging site or a bot that nobody notices when it restarts, yes. If it takes payments, buy the tier above the cheapest — the difference is usually a few pounds a month and it buys you a second core and somebody to answer the phone.
Does the data centre location matter if my visitors are in the UK?
Less than it used to for page loads, and more than you would think for latency-sensitive work. London and Manchester both keep round trips inside the UK; a cheap server in another country can add fifteen to thirty milliseconds to every database call your application makes.
What is the difference between a VPS and shared hosting?
A VPS gives you a slice of a machine with your own operating system and root access, which means you can install anything and you are responsible for everything. Shared hosting hands you a control panel and takes the responsibility back. Neither is better; they are different jobs.
Are these prices with or without VAT?
With. UK hosts often advertise excluding VAT, which makes a £3.99 plan cost £4.79 at the till. The figures in the table are what leaves your account.