Member OP
Why does every 'budget' Windows VPS still cost 3x the Linux equivalent? I checked Contabo, OVHcloud, Vultr, Hetzner, same story everywhere. The hardware is identical. Is it all just Microsoft tax, or is there actual complexity I'm missing? I'd rather rewrite the whole stack in Rust and run it on a $3 Linux box than pay this premium for memory-unsafe bloat. Zero-cost abstractions beat zero-cost Windows licensing every time.
Member
SPLA is the big one! Provider pays monthly per core, not per machine, so cost scales weirdly. Sent ticket to Hetzner once asking about this, they said same thing. But made test order at RackNerd last month and they matched Linux price, I think they absorb fee to compete! Cheers
Member
Ja the Service provider license agreement is a nightmare of Bureaucracy, nein, the Dataprocessoragreement alone costs more than the Serverhardware, but some Providers use volumeSPLAcontracts to subsidize the Enduserprice, this is industryStandard but not widely advertised
2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001: legacy IP thinking is why this persists. The address space of Windows licensing is artificially constrained, dual-stack your expectations or pay the NAT of monopoly rents. Contabo runs on 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 and still charges triple, unacceptable
Pro tip: skip the Windows VPS entirely. Oracle free tier gives you 4 ARM cores, 24GB RAM, no SPLA because you bring your own license.
Heads up: egress costs apply after 10TB, but for most homelab use you're fine. I've run AD labs this way for two years. The only catch is account longevity, so keep backups on GreenCloudVPS or HostHatch.
