Dedicated Servers Compared: Best Bare Metal Hosting in 2026

Dedicated server hosting in 2026: the market at a glance

Bare metal has gotten surprisingly cheap. A modern box with 6 cores, 64 GB RAM and 1 TB of NVMe costs $64.98 a month at Hetzner (AX41), used-enterprise hardware starts at $10.41 with OVHcloud's KS-B (4 Cores · 32 GB RAM · 120 GB SSD · Unlimited traffic · 0.5 Gbps), and Servarica rents a 24-core Intel Xeon Gold server with 2 TB of NVMe for $49.00. At the top of the market the numbers run into four figures: an AMD EPYC 9575F build at Cherry Servers (64 Cores · 384 GB RAM · 6000 GB NVME · 100 TB traffic · 10 Gbps) costs $1,532.07. That spread is exactly why a comparison matters: the same monthly budget buys wildly different hardware depending on where you rent it.

Right now the cheapest dedicated plan in our tracker is KS-B at OVHcloud for $10.41. Prices, 30-day uptime and ratings in the table below refresh every few hours from our monitors, not from provider marketing pages.

What a dedicated server actually costs (live sample)

Entry plans from our tracker. Prices are live and follow the currency switcher at the top of the page:

Live prices from our tracker. Contabo quotes its dedicated servers on a 12-month term. The full table further down lists every dedicated server provider we track, ranked by DHH Score.

Dedicated server price tiers, explained

• Budget: used-enterprise and desktop-class builds. OVHcloud's KS line (from $10.41), Database Mart's Express servers (from $36.00), Namecheap's Xeon E-2234 ($41.53) and Virtualine's auction stock (from $45.00). Good for homelabs, staging and single-app workloads, but expect SATA or SSD rather than NVMe on many of them and 500 Mbps–1 Gbps ports.
• Mid-range: the sweet spot. Modern Ryzen and Xeon builds with 64 GB RAM, NVMe storage and unmetered 1 Gbps are standard here: Hetzner's AX41 and EX44 (the EX44 is 14 Cores · 64 GB RAM · 1024 GB NVME · Unlimited traffic · 1 Gbps for $64.98), Servarica's Golden Retriever line, Cherry Servers, NovoServe, MonoVM and HostPapa all compete in this band.
• High end: high core counts and big RAM. InterServer's Ryzen 9000 series (from $149.00), Contabo's EPYC line-up (its AMD Turin 64 Cores server costs $713.42), Hivelocity's dual-EPYC configurations and Cherry Servers' EPYC builds reach 64 cores and several hundred gigabytes of RAM. Choose these for virtualization fleets, heavy databases or AI inference.

Managed vs unmanaged: pick before you compare prices

The same hardware costs very different amounts depending on who fixes it at 3 a.m. Unmanaged servers — OVHcloud's KS and Rise lines, Contabo, NovoServe and Hetzner's AX and EX lines — hand you root access and remote-management tools; you install the OS, patch it and monitor it. They are consistently the cheapest per core. Hetzner also sells a separate Managed line (from $89.59) for teams that want Hetzner to run the server software. Full-service hosts put the help into the price instead: Database Mart includes daily backups and 24/7 live chat with a 30-day money-back guarantee, HostPapa answers the phone around the clock and also offers 30 days, and IONOS pairs its servers with a 24/7 phone, chat and email line and a personal consultant.

Bandwidth and network quality

• Unmetered 1 Gbps is now table stakes in the mid-tier: Hetzner, Contabo, IONOS, InterServer, NovoServe, MonoVM and Virtualine all include it on their entry servers.
• Metered but generous: Servarica ships 150 TB on a 10 Gbps port, Namecheap 100 TB, HostPapa 40 TB, Cherry Servers 30 TB and Hivelocity 20 TB.
• Network pedigree matters for latency-sensitive workloads: NovoServe runs its own 18 Tbps carrier-neutral backbone with 800+ peering partners and in-house DDoS scrubbing; Hetzner operates multiple 100 Gbit/s uplinks on its own backbone; Hivelocity runs a 2+ Tbps multi-carrier network; Servarica is multi-homed on its own ASN with 10 Gbps uplinks.

Where the hardware lives

Location decides latency and compliance. The widest footprint we track belongs to Hivelocity, with 42 data centers, followed by Contabo (11 locations across Germany, the UK, the USA, Japan, India, Singapore and Australia) and IONOS (10, across Germany, the UK, France, Spain and the USA). Hetzner runs 6 locations in Germany, Finland, the USA and Singapore. If you need Canadian soil specifically, Servarica operates a single Montreal facility and Web Hosting Canada serves from Montreal and Vancouver.

Watch the renewal price, not just the promo

Several hosts advertise a first-term rate that jumps at renewal: Namecheap's Xeon E-2234 goes from $41.53 to $69.88, and Hivelocity's entry server from $97.00 to $129.00. Contabo quotes its dedicated servers on a 12-month term; month to month, its AMD Ryzen 12 Cores costs $146.29. Hetzner, Servarica, Cherry Servers and Linveo list the same price for every month you keep the server. On a multi-year horizon the renewal rate, not the promo, is what you actually pay.

Which dedicated server should you choose?

• Best overall value: Hetzner — modern Ryzen and Xeon hardware, 64 GB RAM, unmetered 1 Gbps and flat pricing (AX41: $64.98).
• Lowest entry price: OVHcloud — KS-B at $10.41 (4 Cores · 32 GB RAM · 120 GB SSD · Unlimited traffic · 0.5 Gbps).
• Most cores for the money: Servarica — a 24-core Xeon Gold server with 2 TB NVMe for $49.00.
• Most hands-off: Database Mart — daily backups, 24/7 live chat and a 30-day money-back guarantee, from $36.00.
• Best support: IONOS — 24/7 phone, chat and email with a personal consultant, 10 data centers.
• Best network: NovoServe — own 18 Tbps backbone and 800+ peers, unmetered 1 Gbps from $66.91.
• Widest global footprint: Hivelocity — 42 data centers.
• Best for Canada: Servarica — a Montreal data center and the same price every month.

Prefer head-to-head reads? See Cherry Servers vs Hetzner, Hetzner vs Hivelocity, Contabo vs InterServer or IONOS vs NovoServe for side-by-side verdicts, or build your own matchup on the Compare hub.