Most budget hosts bill IP addresses separately from compute. A plan priced at $4.50/month often becomes $5.50 once you add the second IPv4 you need for a mail server, a VPN endpoint, or a staging environment on the same box. IPv4 exhaustion has pushed per-address pricing from "free with plan" to $1–$3/month at many providers, and that change alone can shift a plan’s real cost by 20–30%.
| Cost item | Typical monthly price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| First IPv4 (primary) | Included | Some hosts now charge $0.50–$1.00 |
| Additional IPv4 | $1–$3 | Requires justification at some hosts |
| IPv6 /64 block | Free | Almost universally included |
| Floating / failover IP | $2–$5 | Billed even while the VPS is off |
| Reverse DNS setup | Free–$1 | Ticketed at one-person hosts |
| IP after late payment | May be reassigned | New address is not guaranteed |
Why extra IPv4 is the line item people miss
When you sign up, the primary address is bundled into the plan price, so it is invisible. Every additional address is billed as an add-on, which means it sits outside the "plan price" you compared when shopping. If you run three sites that each need outbound mail on a distinct address, or you separate services by IP for security reasons, the add-on line grows independently of your CPU and RAM.
To check where a given host stands, look for the add-on or extras section of the pricing page, not the plan table. Value-focused providers that publish add-on pricing openly are easier to compare on total cost than ones that only quote plan prices. The budget VPS comparison table lists which plans include extra addresses, which is often the deciding factor between two otherwise identical tiers.
IPv6 is effectively free — use it to avoid buying IPv4
IPv6 addresses cost providers almost nothing because the /64 blocks are abundant. If a service only needs inbound reachability from IPv6-capable clients, or you control both endpoints, you can run it on an IPv6 address and skip the extra-IPv4 charge entirely. That covers inter-service communication, backups between your own machines, and admin access tunnelled over IPv6.
- Mail servers: you cannot realistically avoid IPv4 here. Most inbound mail infrastructure still expects it, and a fresh IPv6-only sender has poor deliverability.
- VPN endpoints: IPv6 works for clients that support it, but you lose reachability for the ones that do not.
- Web services: fine on IPv6 with an AAAA record for modern visitors, though legacy client coverage drops.
- Admin and SSH: IPv6-only is safe and saves the add-on.
Floating IPs are billed whether or not you use them
A floating IP exists to fail over between two VPS instances. The value is real: it lets DNS and clients keep a stable address while you rebuild a box. The cost trap is that the address is reserved, so it is billed for as long as it is allocated — not while it is attached. Leaving a floating IP idle after you abandon a failover setup is a common $2–$5/month leak.
Calculate IP cost per service before you buy
Divide the add-on by the number of services that genuinely need a distinct address. One host running ten sites behind a single address pays nothing extra. One host running mail, VPN, a staging site, and a monitoring endpoint on four addresses at $2 each pays $8/month on top of compute — more than the difference between many plan tiers. That arithmetic often argues for consolidating services behind one address with SNI and name-based virtual hosting, or for moving mail to a dedicated external service.
| Scenario | Extra IPs | Add-on cost/month | Cheaper alternative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single site, no mail | 0 | $0 | — |
| Site + outbound mail | 1 | $1–$3 | External SMTP relay |
| Site + VPN + admin | 2 | $2–$6 | IPv6 for admin access |
| Multi-site with failover | 1–2 | $3–$5 | DNS failover instead of floating IP |
Watch IP behaviour when you cancel or downgrade
An address is not yours; it is leased while the instance is active. Cancel or let a VPS lapse and the address returns to the pool, where it may be reassigned. If you have hardcoded it in DNS, in client configs, or in allowlists, a reassignment breaks those references and creates a security risk if the new holder inherits trust you granted by IP. Plan migrations to move to the new address before you release the old one, and treat any allowlist that still trusts an address you no longer own as an open door.
The checklist
- Count the services that truly need distinct IPv4 addresses.
- Check the add-on price, not the plan price, for each.
- Move admin, backups, and inter-service traffic to IPv6 where possible.
- Release unused floating IPs the day you abandon the failover setup.
- Include the add-on total in your monthly figure before comparing providers, and price it against the main comparison table when the gap is material.
- Re-audit add-ons after any plan change. Resizing, migrating, or rebuilding can silently drop an included address or spin up a new one you did not request.
IPv4 add-ons are small numbers individually, but they scale with the number of services, not the size of the server. A $2 address on a $4 plan is a 50% markup — the kind of line item that never shows up in a plan-against-plan price comparison unless you go looking for it. Account for it before you sign up, and re-check the extras page whenever your service count changes.
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