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How to choose a country for a VPS in Europe
Europe offers the widest choice of virtual servers: hundreds of hosts, dozens of countries, plans from the simplest to the most powerful. But "VPS in Europe" isn't one place — the conditions vary a lot. The country determines ping, laws, how complaints are handled and price. Below is how to narrow the choice down to two or three options.
Latency
The rule is simple: the closer the server is to you and your users, the lower the ping. A rough map of the continent:
- North and the Baltics — Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; selections — Finland and the Baltics.
- Central hubs — Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Czechia, Sweden. Most of the continent's large data centres are here.
- West — France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Austria.
- South — Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece.
Actual numbers depend on your provider's routing: sometimes traffic to a neighbouring country goes via Frankfurt. Before buying, check the ping to the host's test IP.
Laws and rules
GDPR applies in every EU country, but the strictness of the supervisory authorities differs. Germany and the Netherlands are known for reacting quickly to complaints from rights holders and about spam. Switzerland isn't in the EU; it has its own data protection law and a reputation as a neutral jurisdiction, but prices there are higher. Moldova, Serbia and the United Kingdom have their own rules; for a project this is more often a question of the host's policy than of the law.
Prices
The most affordable plans are usually in countries with large hosting clusters — Germany, the Netherlands, Finland — and in Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova. A list of countries in the east of the continent is on the VPS in Eastern Europe page. Switzerland, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom are the most expensive. Sorting the table above by price will immediately show where it's cheaper right now.
When comparing prices, look beyond the monthly fee. One host includes an IPv4 address, unlimited traffic and snapshots in the price, another charges for all of these separately, and a European VDS that looks cheap at first ends up costing more. Another factor is the exchange rate: almost all European plans are billed in euros, so the amount in your currency changes from month to month.
A short selection algorithm
- Need the lowest ping — pick the country nearest to you or your users.
- Need maximum connectivity and choice — Germany or the Netherlands.
- Lowest price — Eastern Europe or the large clusters in Germany.
- An audience in a specific country — a server in that country or a neighbouring one.
- Check the payment methods: hosts differ in which cards and wallets they accept, and many also take cryptocurrency.
We collect plans from the hosts' own websites and update them every hour, and the "Payment" column shows which methods each of them accepts.