How much does a dedicated server cost? On the hosts’ own pages we checked on October 5, 2026, the entry listings we could read ran from $25.99 to $167.50 a month, and the cheap end was cheap for one reason: old or small CPUs. Under $50 you’re buying a chip from 2009 to 2013 or an Atom. From $75 up, you’re paying for a newer CPU, or for more RAM, transfer and support around an older one.
Below are the prices, grouped into bands, then the six things that move them.
What each price band buys
We sorted the listings we could read on hosts’ own pages into four bands. Examples are real listings with the host’s name left off; promos are marked.
| Price band | What the money buys | Real listings, checked 2026-10-05 | Our builds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $50 | A 2009 to 2013 CPU or an Atom, 2 to 4 cores, 4 to 32 GB of DDR3, up to 30 TB where stated | A Seattle listing at $25.99 with a 2009 Xeon L5520 (4 cores, 24 GB, 30 TB). A Miami listing at $41 with a 2013 Core i5 (4 cores, 16 GB) | None |
| $50–$100 | A 2021 entry Xeon in our sample: 6 cores, 32 GB, an SSD, about 20 TB | A $75 listing with a 2021 Xeon E-2336 (6 cores, 32 GB, 480 GB SSD, 20 TB) | None |
| $100–$200 | A 2016 to 2021 CPU with 4 to 16 cores and 32 to 64 GB on SSD, or an older CPU with more around it; 10 to 100 TB | A Chicago listing from $158.13 with a 2021 EPYC 7313P (16 cores, 64 GB, 100 TB). A $167.50 promo, half price for two months, with a 2020 Xeon Gold 6226R (16 cores, 64 GB, 10 TB) | $126: E3-1230 v1, 16 GB, 1 TB HDD, 30 TB. $159: Xeon D-1541 Special, 64 GB, 1 TB SSD, 1 Gbps unmetered |
| $200–$400+ | Dual-socket Xeons with 12 to 28 cores and 64 to 128 GB; 30 TB and up, or a 10 Gbps port | A $250 listing with two 2016 Xeon E5-2680 v4s (28 cores, 128 GB, 10 Gbps port) | $248: Xeon D-1541, 64 GB, 1 TB SSD, 30 TB. $289: 2 × E5-2670 v2 special, 20 cores, 50 TB. $334: 2 × E5-2620, 12 cores, 30 TB |
InterServer showed no public price that day, and ServerMania’s price table didn’t load, though its own pages say “typically starting at $50 per month.”
Our five builds sit in the top two bands, and each one includes 4 Gbps of DDoS protection, R1Soft backups with 1 TB of storage, $0 setup, month-to-month terms, people on tickets and phones 24/7, a written SLA with credits, and $0.02 per GB overage on metered plans. None of that shows in a sticker price, so ask every host on your shortlist for the same list.
Whatever band you shop in, read the CPU model before you read the price. Dedicated server pricing tracks the age of the hardware first. The rest of the invoice is where hosts differ.
1. CPU generation and core count
Hold everything else still and the CPU line alone tells the story. These are the processor prices on our own order forms, which add RAM, disk and bandwidth on top:
| CPU on our order form | Launched | Cores / threads | CPU line, $/month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xeon E3-1230 v1 | 2011 | 4 / 8 | $65 |
| Xeon E3-1230 v5 | 2015 | 4 / 8 | $85 |
| Xeon D-1541 | 2015 | 8 / 16 | $105 |
| 2 × Xeon E5-2620 | 2012 | 12 / 24 | $225 |
| 2 × Xeon E5-2680 v4 | 2016 | 28 / 56 | $295 |
Same four cores, four years newer: $20 more. Same 2015 vintage with twice the cores: another $20. Go dual-socket and the CPU line passes $200.
The rest of the bill is plain arithmetic. RAM is $1 per GB, a 1 TB HDD is $25, a 1 TB SSD is $59, and 30 TB of transfer is $20. That’s how the $126 box breaks down: $65 CPU, $16 for 16 GB, $25 disk, $20 bandwidth. The $248 Xeon D-1541 build adds up the same way.
Specials work by cutting the CPU line on older stock. The same D-1541 is $159 as a current special with an unmetered 1 Gbps port, offered in Ashburn, Chicago and LA. The 20-core dual E5-2670 v2 special in Chicago is $289, less than the standard dual E5 with fewer cores.
2. Bandwidth and port
This one surprises people. On our standard builds, 10, 20 or 30 TB of monthly transfer all cost the same $20, 50 TB is $60, and 100 TB is $160. Swap the allowance for a 1 Gbps unmetered port and that line goes to $320, nearly five times the price of the E3 CPU.
So compare allowances as well as prices. The listings in the table include anywhere from 10 TB to 100 TB, and most of our builds include 30 TB. Then check the overage rate: ours is $0.02 per GB, or $20 per TB. If your traffic is steady and heavy, the port can outweigh everything else on the invoice. Our post on unmetered vs metered bandwidth does that math.
3. DDoS protection tier
Ask two questions. Is protection included and always on, and what happens when an attack is bigger than what’s included? Some hosts scrub it, some drop your IP until it stops, and the difference matters more than a few dollars a month.
Every GigeNET dedicated server includes 4 Gbps of protection. The order form sells bigger tiers: 6 Gbps for $155 a month, 8 Gbps for $330 and 10 Gbps for $525. Past that, ProxyShield Advanced is custom quoted.
4. Management
Unmanaged prices assume you patch the OS yourself. If you won’t, management can nearly double an entry bill. Our Enterprise Server Management is $99 a month per server ($79 on a cPanel server), which covers OS updates and security patches, advanced monitoring and up to two hours of support per server a month. On the $126 box that’s a $225 server.
Licenses stack on top. cPanel Premier Metal is $49.50 for 100 accounts, and Windows Server Standard is $50 a month on our order form. Details are on our managed servers page.
5. Location and power
Location moves the price less than you’d expect between major US metros. Our E3 and Xeon D builds cost the same in Chicago and Los Angeles. It moves latency a lot more, which is why we’d pick the city by where your users are (Ashburn vs Chicago walks through it).
Where location does show up is in the very cheapest listings. OneProvider’s $8.91 promo servers sit in Paris and Amsterdam, and Cherry’s cheapest in-stock server is in Lithuania. If your users are in the US, price US stock.
Power is the cost you can’t see on a price list. Intel rates the Xeon D-1541 at 45 W and each E5-2680 v4 at 120 W, so a dual E5-2680 v4 box carries more than five times the Xeon D’s CPU power budget, and the host pays to power and cool every one of those watts.
6. Setup fees, contracts and renewals
Four of the pages we read stated a setup policy, and all four said there’s no fee: we charge $0, Hivelocity’s FAQ says there’s no setup fee, InterServer’s rapid-deploy page says “No Setup Fees,” and ServerMania’s pricing guide lists setup as included. The other pages didn’t show a fee either way, so ask.
Contract length is where the headline price gets soft. One featured listing we read advertised 15% off for a two-year term, and the $167.50 listing in the table is a half-price offer for the first two months. Our servers are month to month at the listed price. Whoever you buy from, ask two things in writing: what you’ll pay in month three, and what you’ll pay at renewal.
What $126 turns into
Here’s a realistic small production build on our E3-1230 v1, priced line by line from the order form:
- Base build: $126
- RAM from 16 GB to 32 GB: +$16
- Second 1 TB HDD for software RAID 1 (software RAID is $0): +$25
- A /29 of extra IPv4 addresses (all 8 usable, routed to the server): +$16
- Enterprise Server Management: +$99
That’s $282 a month. Backups don’t add anything here, because the default R1Soft agent with 1 TB is $0 on the order form. Do this exercise with every host on your shortlist, since the base price is where the comparison starts, not where it ends. Our buyer’s checklist covers the questions to ask along the way.
FAQ
It depends on the job. A $26 to $49 box with a 2009 to 2013 CPU is fine for a backup target, a VPN endpoint or a low-traffic site. For a busy database or anything that pins cores all day, spend for a newer generation or more cores, because you’ll pay for the old chip in slow queries instead.
Not at the entry level. Our VPS plans run $8 to $35 a month, against $126 for the cheapest dedicated build. Dedicated starts to win per unit once you need lots of RAM, disk or transfer, or once sharing the hardware with other customers is what’s slowing you down.
At GigeNET it’s $0.02 per GB past your plan’s allowance on metered builds, which is $20 per TB. Unmetered plans have no cap and no overage. Other hosts set their own rates, so find the number on the order form before you need it.
Renting wins when you need one or two servers and don’t want to own hardware. Colocation starts to pay off with several servers you already own and plan to keep for years. Our 36-month cost breakdown runs the numbers.
Our current builds and prices are on the dedicated servers page. If none of them fits, send the workload through the custom quote form and we’ll reply with a configuration and a price.
