Looking for host that doesn't lie about 'unlimited'

Host that doesn't lie about 'unlimited'

In my experience, every Linux host Ive tried advertises unlimited storage but then theres some inode limit buried in paragraph 47 of the TOS. To be fair, I know Windows Server hosts arent immune to this either, but at least the limits are usually clearer. Does anyone have actual numbers from actual providers? Contabo, OVHcloud, Vultr, Hetzner, InterServer, Hostinger, KnownHost, RackNerd, GreenCloudVPS, HostHatch, CloudCone, Leaseweb, Time4VPS — has anyone collected real caps?

"Unlimited" in hosting TOS is a marketing term with no technical meaning. What you're actually constrained by:

• Inode count (ext4 default: 4 billion per filesystem, but hosts set 100K-500K)
• Database size (often 1GB-5GB soft limit before account review)
• CPU minutes per day (rarely disclosed, typically 10-30% of one core)
• Egress bandwidth (sometimes "unmetered" at 10Mbps capped)

The honest providers disclose at least two of these in pre-sales documentation. Most disclose zero.

As far as I know, GDPR Article 5(1)(c) requires data minimisation, which creates tension with "unlimited" claims — if the provider cannot justify why they need to store unlimited data about you, the claim itself may indicate poor privacy practice. I have asked three German hosts for their actual inode caps under DSAR. Two refused as "trade secrets." This is not compliant.

Actually (back in my day (2019 (specifically August 2019 when I was running CentOS 7.6 with cPanel 82.0.17))) the unlimited hosts were already playing games with iNodes. I kept a spreadsheet (actually a LibreOffice Calc file (version 6.2.3)) of all the "unlimited" hosts I tried. Hostinger was 250K inodes. CloudCone was 500K but would suspend at 300K "for server stability." Contabo didnt list it anywhere but support admitted 150K in chat. I should dig up that file...

Inode_limits = {
"Vultr": "unspecified, cattle not pets",
"Hetzner": "1M inodes, but Kubernetes ingress counts as 1 inode per connection",
"InterServer": "500K, enforced by cron job that deletes oldest files",
"self-hosted": "cattle not pets, ZFS has no inode limit"
}

Hot take: if youre not running Kubernetes with cattle-not-pets ephemeral storage, youre paying for lies. `unlimited` is just `we havent automated the suspension yet`

I bought a RackNerd VPS last year... their TOS says unlimited... actually its 750K inodes... 20GB database... 50GB total storage... they dont advertise it because... marketing says unlimited converts better... sorry if this causes problems for me...