VPS spec sheets use a vocabulary that sounds standard and is not. “2 vCPU”, “dedicated RAM”, and “unmetered bandwidth” mean different things at every provider. Below are the definitions you need in order to read any budget plan correctly.
vCPU: A Time Slice, Not a Processor
A vCPU (virtual CPU) is a scheduling share of a physical core, not a physical core. Provider A’s “2 vCPU” may mean two full threads on a dedicated core; provider B’s may mean two shares of one overcommitted core, expressed as a ratio like 1/4 or 1/8. Two vCPUs on a 1:8 oversubscribed host deliver worse sustained throughput than one vCPU on a 1:1 host. The number is only meaningful next to the CPU model and the share ratio — both of which budget hosts frequently omit.
Dedicated vs Burstable vs Shared CPU
- Dedicated vCPU: Reserved thread time. Consistent performance, higher price. Common on $20+ plans.
- Burstable: You get a baseline share and can spike above it using accumulated credits. Cheap, but sustained load drains credits and drops you to baseline.
- Shared: No reservation at all. Fine for a blog, poor for a database under continuous load.
RAM: Dedicated, Burstable, and “Guaranteed”
Dedicated RAM is reserved to your container and cannot be reclaimed by neighbors. Burstable RAM (seen on OpenVZ/vSwap plans) is a soft allocation: you can use more than your nominal amount until the host is under pressure, at which point your balloon driver has to give it back. A “2 GB” burstable plan can behave like a 768 MB plan on a busy host. If the provider won’t say dedicated, assume burstable.
Storage: NVMe, SSD, and the “Fast Disk” Dodge
NVMe attaches directly to the PCIe bus: highest IOPS and lowest latency. SATA SSD caps around 550 MB/s sequential and far lower random IOPS under contention. Anything labelled “fast disk”, “SSD-backed”, or “enterprise storage” without qualification is ambiguous — and ambiguity on a budget plan usually means SATA. Ask for a random-read benchmark result, or run one yourself in the first week.
Bandwidth: Transfer, Port Speed, and Metering
| Term | Definition | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly transfer | Total GB moved in/out per billing cycle | Exceeding it triggers throttle or fees |
| Port speed | Maximum throughput (100 Mbps / 1 Gbps / 10 Gbps) | A 100 Mbps cap limits you to ~32 TB/month even if transfer is “unmetered” |
| Unmetered | No GB cap, but port speed is enforced | Not the same as unlimited — you are speed-limited |
| Asymmetric counting | Some providers count ingress, some only egress | Backup and sync traffic can eat your allowance |
Virtualization Type: KVM vs OpenVZ
KVM provides a real kernel per VM: you can run Docker, custom kernels, and nested virtualization. OpenVZ/LXC shares the host kernel: cheaper and often faster for simple workloads, but no Docker-in-Docker and no loadable kernel modules. For anything container-based, treat KVM as required.
Glossary Checklist
- CPU: model, core count, and share ratio
- RAM: dedicated or burstable
- Disk: NVMe or SATA, plus total GB
- Transfer: GB included, then overage policy and port speed
- Virtualization: KVM or container-based
- IPv4/IPv6: included addresses, extra-IP pricing
Once you have those six data points for each candidate, the comparison becomes arithmetic rather than marketing. You can look up these exact fields for each plan on our budget VPS specs comparison and avoid the two most common traps: trusting an unscoped “vCPU” count and trusting an “unmetered” label without a port speed.
Definitions for the Rest of the Line Items
- IPv4 address: Most plans include one. Additional IPv4s typically cost $1–$3/month each because the global pool is exhausted; IPv6 blocks are usually free.
- Reverse DNS (rDNS/PTR): Free with most providers, but set manually. Required for mail servers; irrelevant for a web-only box.
- Snapshots: Point-in-time disk images, usually billed by GB stored. Distinct from backups, which are scheduled.
- Backups: Scheduled copies, commonly 20–30% of the plan price as an add-on. Verify whether they cover databases or only the filesystem.
- Private networking: VLAN connectivity between your own VMs, usually free and often the cheapest way to add capacity later.
- Floating/reserved IP: An address you can move between instances, billed hourly or monthly when unattached.
A Worked Glossary Translation
| Marketing wording | Likely reality | Question to ask the provider |
|---|---|---|
| “2 vCPU” | Burstable or shared threads | What is the CPU share ratio? |
| “Guaranteed RAM” | Dedicated allocation | Is it balloon-driver reclaimable? |
| “Fast SSD storage” | SATA SSD or SAN-backed | Is this NVMe? What IOPS should I expect? |
| “Unmetered bandwidth” | Port-speed limited | What port speed, and is there a fair-use clause? |
| “Cloud VPS” | Usually a KVM VM on a shared cluster | Is storage local or network-attached? |
Provider answers to those five questions tell you more about a plan’s real quality than the entire feature grid. Hosts that answer them precisely are usually the ones whose overage and renewal policies are also written plainly — and plainness is worth paying a small premium for when the alternative is discovering the limits after your site goes down.
