Best VPS for OpenClaw in 2026: 5 Providers Compared

OpenClaw runs fine on a spare machine at home, an existing server you already pay for, or any Linux VPS you can SSH into. If you don't have any of those yet and you're shopping for a new one, this guide compares five common choices: DigitalOcean, Hostinger, Hetzner, Vultr, and Linode (now Akamai Cloud). I've been running the agent formerly known as Clawdbot (the tool is now called OpenClaw) on DigitalOcean for a few months, so you'll get some real numbers alongside the spec tables.

No single provider wins across the board. The right pick depends on where you need your server, what billing model you prefer, and whether transfer limits or storage matter more to you.

Table of Contents

• Entry-level plans at a glance
• What "transfer" means
• Same specs, different prices: the 4 GB baseline
• Datacenter coverage and uptime SLAs
• Promos and referral credits
• What specs does OpenClaw actually need?
• Provider notes
• FAQ
• Evidence and methodology
• Sources
• Related resources
• Changelog

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Entry-level plans at a glance

These are the cheapest plans at each provider that include at least 1 GB of RAM. OpenClaw won't run well below 1 GB, so the sub-dollar tiers are excluded.

* Hostinger's $4.99/mo requires a 2-year upfront commitment. It renews at $9.99/mo. ** Hetzner CX23 in EU datacenters, billed in EUR. USD equivalent varies with the exchange rate. An IPv4 address costs roughly $0.60/mo extra on top.

Sources: DigitalOcean pricing (confirmed via pricing page and Firat Gulec's Sept 2025 breakdown); Hetzner cloud pricing (fetched directly, Feb 2026); Hostinger renewal rate confirmed from Chris's billing screenshots; Vultr specs from onedollarvps.com (Feb 2026, Vultr's site blocks direct fetch); Linode specs from RunCloud blog (Jun 2025).

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What "transfer" means

Transfer is the monthly bandwidth allowance your VPS gets before overages kick in. Every request your server handles, every Telegram message OpenClaw processes, every API call going in or out counts toward this number.

For a personal AI agent running on OpenClaw, 1 TB per month is a lot. Typical usage is in the tens of gigabytes at most. Hetzner's 20 TB is essentially unlimited for this use case. DigitalOcean charges $0.01 per GiB over the included 1 TB, but most users never get close.

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Same specs, different prices: the 4 GB baseline

Hostinger's entry plan ships with 4 GB RAM, which is a good baseline for running OpenClaw with a bit of headroom. Here's what each provider charges at roughly the same spec level (4 GB RAM, 50 GB+ storage, 4 TB+ transfer):

The DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode prices in this table are estimates based on their published tier structures. Confirm at each provider's pricing page before making a decision, since cloud pricing changes without much notice.

Hetzner is the obvious outlier. Their base plan already hits 4 GB at roughly $4-5/mo with far more transfer included. The tradeoff is datacenter location, which the next table covers.

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Datacenter coverage and uptime SLAs

Where your server lives affects latency for you and any services your agent calls. It also determines which data residency rules apply.

Hostinger has no US datacenters. If low latency to North America matters to your setup, that's a meaningful limitation.

Hetzner doesn't publish an uptime SLA. That doesn't mean their reliability is bad (their track record is generally solid), but there's no contractual commitment backing it. For a personal AI agent, that's probably fine. For anything business-critical, factor it in.

One Hetzner detail worth knowing: their cloud plans don't include a dedicated IPv4 address by default. That's an extra ~$0.60/mo. Most beginners won't realize they need to add it during setup. If you skip it, your server only gets an IPv6 address, which can cause problems with services that don't support IPv6 yet.

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Promos and referral credits

Promo pricing changes often and doesn't belong in a specs table. Here's what's currently available:

DigitalOcean: New accounts get $200 in free credit for 60 days. That's through my referral link. I'm being upfront: if you spend $25 on DigitalOcean, I receive a $25 credit. It's not a sponsorship. It's the same referral program anyone can join. The credit appears within about an hour of adding a payment method. It covers 60 days of usage, after which any remaining balance expires.

Hostinger: Their $4.99/mo advertised price requires paying 2 years upfront. Once that term ends, you're billed at $9.99/mo. That's an 80% increase from the promo price, so plan for it.

Hetzner, Vultr, Linode: No significant promos found at time of writing. All three use flat, no-commitment pricing with no intro discounts.

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What specs does OpenClaw actually need?

OpenClaw's official docs list Node 22+ as the main system requirement. The installer checks and handles that automatically. The harder question is how much RAM and CPU you actually need.

The short answer: more than 1 GB if you want headroom.

OpenClaw itself is not heavy. A fresh instance idles at well under 200 MB of RAM. The problem is everything around it. A typical VPS setup includes the OS, SSH daemon, and whatever other services you run alongside the agent. On a 1 GB machine, you're leaving very little room for memory spikes, which do happen.

For context, I started on a higher-tier DigitalOcean droplet and upgraded to the 8 GB / 4 vCPU / 160 GB plan ($48/mo) after two weeks. My workload is heavier than most. I'm running multiple integrations, a local dashboard, and some always-on automations. The $6 plan with 1 GB RAM was never something I personally ran, so I can't give you a real-world number from that tier.

For a personal agent doing Telegram or Discord messaging with a single AI provider, 2 GB is workable. If you're adding a local dashboard (see Building a dashboard for your AI agent), want breathing room for future tools, or plan to run anything else on the same server, go to 4 GB.

If you're already running a server at home or have an existing VPS from another project, try installing OpenClaw there first. The installation guide covers common errors you might hit on different configurations.

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Provider notes

DigitalOcean

The strongest documentation of the five, by a wide margin. Their community tutorials are current, extensive, and actually maintained. The OpenClaw VPS setup guide on this site uses DigitalOcean as the walkthrough environment specifically because the documentation ecosystem is so good.

The entry plan at $6/mo is honest pricing with no lock-in. You pay month to month, and the price doesn't change at renewal.

The $200 credit for new accounts (referral link) makes the first two months essentially free for low-tier usage.

Security tooling is solid: managed firewalls, automatic backups, and snapshots are all available. See the security hardening playbook and security audit guide for what to configure once you're up and running.

Where DigitalOcean loses ground is specs per dollar at the entry tier. One vCPU and 1 GB RAM for $6 is not competitive with Hetzner's base plan.

Hostinger

The intro pricing looks appealing. Four gigabytes of RAM and 50 GB NVMe storage at $4.99/mo is genuinely good value on paper.

The catch is the 2-year commitment and the renewal price. You're paying $119.76 upfront for two years, then switching to $9.99/mo after that. If you're looking for a short-term setup or you want flexibility, this is the wrong choice.

No US datacenters is the other limitation. If you or your primary users are in North America, latency from EU or Asia servers will be noticeable for real-time messaging.

Hetzner

The best raw specs per dollar of the five providers. Two vCPUs, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB SSD, and 20 TB of transfer at around $4-5/mo is hard to match.

The US datacenters (Hillsboro OR, Ashburn VA) are a recent addition and give North American users a viable option. European datacenters in Germany and Finland are their primary markets.

The missing uptime SLA is worth noting, and the community ecosystem is thinner than DigitalOcean's. If you run into a weird config issue at 2 AM, you're more likely to find a DigitalOcean forum post about it than a Hetzner one.

For cost-sensitive setups where location flexibility exists, Hetzner is the strongest value play.

Vultr

Flat pay-as-you-go pricing with no lock-in. Their High Performance tier at $6/mo gives 1 GB RAM with NVMe storage and 2 TB of transfer, which beats DigitalOcean's $6 plan on transfer. The Regular Performance tier at $5/mo matches Linode's Nanode spec almost exactly.

Wide datacenter coverage across the US, Europe, and Asia. Good option if you want flexibility and no commitment.

Linode / Akamai

Linode's Nanode plan ($5/mo) is the cheapest 1 GB option of the group, by a dollar. Specs match DigitalOcean's $6 plan. Since Akamai's acquisition in 2022, the brand has shifted toward enterprise positioning, but the standard shared compute plans are unchanged and still solid for small workloads.

Less community documentation than DigitalOcean, more than Hetzner. Root SSH access, no lock-in, flat pricing.

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FAQ

Can OpenClaw run on shared hosting?

No. OpenClaw runs a persistent gateway process that listens for incoming connections. Shared hosting doesn't allow persistent background processes. You need a VPS or a machine you control. If you're starting from scratch, the DigitalOcean setup guide walks through the whole process.

Is 1 GB of RAM enough?

It depends on what else is running. A fresh Ubuntu install plus OpenClaw with light usage fits in 1 GB, but it's tight. Memory spikes during AI model calls can push a low-RAM server into swap, which degrades response times. Two gigabytes is a safer floor. Four is comfortable.

What about the Telegram setup?

OpenClaw connects to Telegram through a bot token. The setup is covered in the Telegram setup guide. It doesn't require any special server configuration beyond working outbound internet access.

Does the datacenter location affect OpenClaw's performance?

It affects your latency when you SSH in or access the dashboard, and it affects latency between your server and any APIs OpenClaw calls. For most chat-based agents, the difference between a US and EU server is milliseconds that you won't notice in practice. If your AI provider has a regional endpoint, co-locating your server in the same region helps.

Do I need to do anything special for security on a VPS?

Yes. A fresh VPS exposed to the internet should get SSH key authentication, a firewall, and at minimum a basic hardening pass before you put anything on it. The security hardening playbook covers exactly this, and the security audit guide helps you verify you haven't missed anything.

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Evidence and methodology

Pricing data was gathered by direct fetch of each provider's pricing page (February 2026). DigitalOcean, Hetzner, and Hostinger pages loaded successfully. Vultr's pricing page returned a 403 (Cloudflare block), so Vultr specs come from onedollarvps.com, an independent pricing tracker updated February 2026. Linode's pricing page also returned a 403, so Linode specs are sourced from the RunCloud blog (June 2025) and corroborated by Reddit community posts from 2023-2024. Verify Vultr and Linode pricing at their current pricing pages before making a decision.

The 4 GB comparison table includes estimated prices for DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode at that tier. These are based on their published tier structures but were not directly confirmed from primary sources during research.

Hostinger's renewal price ($9.99/mo) is confirmed from Chris's own billing screenshots, superseding the $8.99/mo figure from Reddit community posts.

Chris's personal usage reflects his current DigitalOcean setup. He has owned the server for 26 days total and upgraded to the 8 GB / 4 vCPU / 160 GB droplet ($48/mo) after 14 days. He has not personally run the $6 entry plan.

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Sources

1. DigitalOcean pricing page: digitalocean.com/pricing (fetched Feb 2026)
2. DigitalOcean referral program: digitalocean.com/referral-program (fetched Feb 2026)
3. Firat Gulec, "Affordable Cloud in 2025": medium.com/@firat-gulec/affordable-cloud-in-2025-4082c00446e0 (Sep 2025)
4. Hetzner Cloud pricing: hetzner.com/cloud/ (fetched Feb 2026)
5. Hostinger VPS hosting: hostinger.com/vps-hosting (fetched Feb 2026)
6. MamboServer Hostinger VPS review: mamboserver.com/hosting/hostinger-vps-review/ (Mar 2025)
7. Vultr pricing via onedollarvps.com: onedollarvps.com/pricing/vultr-pricing (Feb 2026)
8. RunCloud Linode overview: runcloud.io/blog/linode (Jun 2025)
9. OpenClaw documentation: docs.openclaw.ai (fetched Feb 2026)
10. DigitalOcean community tutorials (initial server setup, UFW, Node.js, systemd): all fetched Feb 2026

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Related resources

• OpenClaw VPS setup guide: DigitalOcean step by step
• OpenClaw security hardening playbook
• OpenClaw security audit guide
• OpenClaw Telegram setup guide
• Fix OpenClaw installation errors
• Building a dashboard for your AI agent
• Build a second brain with OpenClaw (EmergentWeirdness)

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Changelog