Contabo
Highest RAM per dollar. 70B models on a $30/mo budget.
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Plans & pricing
Verify current prices on Contabo ↗Prices shown are community-verified as of April 2026. Click the provider link above to confirm current rates — pricing changes without notice.
| Plan | RAM | CPU / GPU | Price | Ollama use | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPS S SSD Recommended | 6GB | 4 vCPU | $5.99 | 7B models comfortably | Get plan → |
| VPS M SSD | 12GB | 6 vCPU | $9.99 | 14B models (Q4_K_M) | Get plan → |
| VPS L SSD | 24GB | 8 vCPU | $17.99 | 34B models (Q4) | Get plan → |
| VPS XL SSD | 48GB | 10 vCPU | $29.99 | 70B models (Q4_K_M) | Get plan → |
Community benchmarks
Measured by community members running real workloads. Numbers are tokens/second on the listed model.
Detailed pros & cons
What's good
Running 70B models on any other provider costs $100+/mo. Contabo's VPS XL is the only way to get 70B CPU inference under $30.
Unlike Hetzner (EU only), Contabo has St. Louis and Kansas City for US-based users. No transatlantic latency.
Hundreds of Stack Registry entries from people running Contabo for 6–18 months. The low price is real and sustained.
Watch out for
Order a server and wait up to 4 hours. Hetzner provisions in under 60 seconds. Not a dealbreaker for non-urgent setups.
Not shown on the pricing page. Your first invoice will be higher than expected. Budget for it.
Community reports occasional CPU throttling during peak times. Higher server density = more sharing. For personal use: fine. For SLA-bound production: risky.
Responses range from hours to days. If something breaks Friday night, you might be waiting until Monday.
Anyone needing 24GB+ RAM on a tight budget. The go-to for 70B model testing at $30/mo. Hobbyists and budget home-lab builders.
Mission-critical production, anyone who needs servers provisioned in minutes, or fast support response.
Ollama setup guide for Contabo
Step-by-step from account creation to first model response. Takes 15–20 minutes.
Order your VPS
Go to contabo.com/en/vps and choose your plan. Important: there is a one-time setup fee (~$5.50) not prominently displayed. Your first invoice will be higher.
Wait for provisioning
Contabo takes 1–4 hours to provision (vs seconds for Hetzner). This is the main trade-off for the low price. Plan orders during business hours for fastest turnaround.
Check your email
Contabo emails your server IP, username, and temporary password. Log in to the customer portal at my.contabo.com to confirm the server status.
Connect and secure
ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP Change the default password immediately: passwd Then update: apt update && apt upgrade -y
Install Ollama
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh Check service status: systemctl status ollama
Choose your model by RAM
VPS S (6GB): ollama pull qwen2.5:7b-instruct-q4_K_M VPS M (12GB): ollama pull qwen2.5:14b-instruct-q4_K_M VPS XL (48GB): ollama pull llama3.3:70b-instruct-q4_K_M Match model size to your RAM tier.
Expose the API
Edit /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service: Add under [Service]: Environment="OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0" Reload and restart: systemctl daemon-reload systemctl restart ollama
Community setups
"Cheapest option that runs 7B. Fine for casual chat. Don't expect sub-second responses."
"70B for $30/mo. Nothing else comes close. Worth the provisioning wait."
Ready to get started?
Starting at $5.99/mo. No long-term commitment required.