Head-to-head, indicative as of Oct 2026. Prices change — always confirm on the vendor page.
Quick read: pick AWS Lightsail if your workload is simple sites that still want the aws backbone and its included egress fits your traffic shape; pick Contabo if you need maximum ram per dollar for non-critical workloads. For anything latency-sensitive at the edge, cold start row is the tiebreaker.
| AWS Lightsail | Contabo | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Simplified VPS | Budget VPS |
| Free tier | 3 months free on first instances | None |
| Paid pricing (indicative) | Flat from ~$5/mo (1GB) | Big-RAM VPS from ~$5/mo |
| Egress | 1-5TB included by plan | 32TB on many plans |
| Cold start | N/A (always-on) | N/A |
| Regions | Major AWS regions | EU + US + Singapore |
| Best for | Simple sites that still want the AWS backbone | Maximum RAM per dollar for non-critical workloads |
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Last reviewed 2026-10-02 · NinjaOps SEO grid · DevOps blog