The Real Cost of a VPS IP Address: IPv4 Add-On Pricing Explained

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 up, and the add-on is easy to miss until renewal. Before you commit, check our VPS comparison table for which providers bundle addresses and which meter them.

What an IP Actually Costs Today

ARIN exhausted its free pool years ago. Addresses now trade on the transfer market at $30–$60 each, one-time. Providers amortize that over a customer’s expected lifetime and charge a monthly fee. The spread across budget hosts is wide.

Host type	First IPv4	Additional IPv4	IPv6
Budget VPS (typical)	Included	$1–$3/mo	Free /16
Mid-tier VPS	Included	$2–$4/mo	Free
Cloud provider	$3–$5/mo	$3–$5/mo	Free
Dedicated server	/29 included	$1–$2/mo in block	Free

The monthly recurring model is the trap. A $2/month address costs $24/year — comparable to buying a dedicated address outright. Over a three-year contract you have paid $72 for something that trades below $60 on the open market.

Why You Need More Than One

Legitimate reasons to hold multiple IPv4 addresses on a single VPS:

• Separate mail reputation: running Postfix for two domains on one IP links their reputations. One spam complaint tanks both.
• SSL / SNI legacy: rare now, but some old clients still struggle with multiple TLS certs on one IP.
• VPN separation: a personal WireGuard endpoint should not share an address with your web app.
• Staging isolation: a separate IP lets you run staging behind basic auth without exposing production.
• Failover: a floating or secondary IP lets you move services between nodes without DNS propagation delays.

Each of these is valid, but none requires paying monthly forever. Reevaluate whether you still need the second address every renewal.

IPv6 Is Free — Use It

Every provider on this list hands out a /64 or /48 of IPv6 at no cost. That is effectively unlimited addresses. The catch is that IPv6-only breaks for visitors on legacy IPv4 networks, so you cannot drop IPv4 entirely. But you can move internal services, tunnels, monitoring, and anything that is not user-facing to IPv6 and keep exactly one IPv4 for public web and mail.

Blocks Versus Single Addresses

If you need three or more addresses, ask about a /29 block. A /29 is 8 addresses (5 usable) and providers often price it at $4–$8/month — meaningfully cheaper per address than five singles at $2–$4 each. The catch is you usually need to justify the block to the provider under RIR policy, and transfers can take days.

Need	Cheapest structure	Monthly
1 public service	Bundled single IP + IPv6	$0
Web + mail	2 single IPs	$2–$6
5+ services	/29 block	$4–$8
Failover pair	2 IPs, one floating	$2–$5

Watch the Fine Print

Three clauses catch people out. First, some hosts charge for an IP even when the VPS is suspended — you keep paying during downtime. Second, “reverse DNS included” is not universal; a few budget hosts charge to set rDNS, which is fatal for mail. Third, IPs are usually non-transferable when you migrate to another provider, so your recurring spend never becomes an owned asset.

The Reputation Cost of a Shared Address

An IP address carries a reputation that follows it between owners. A cheap secondary IPv4 recycled from a previous tenant can arrive on blocklists, which is catastrophic for mail deliverability and mildly harmful for web traffic. Before attaching a new address, check it against the major DNSBLs and request a replacement if it is listed. Budget hosts will usually swap a flagged address free of charge, but only if you ask before you need it.

This is one place where the cheapest option is genuinely fine on paper but risky in practice. A $1/month address with a clean history beats a $0.50 address that bounces your transactional email. Always verify reputation on receipt.

Exit Costs and Address Portability

IP addresses almost never transfer between providers. When you migrate, you either renumber or run both hosts in parallel until DNS fully propagates — a process that can take days for cached records. If you depend on a well-established address for mail, plan migration windows carefully and lower TTLs well in advance. The recurring $2–$3/month you pay for addresses is not buying an asset; it is renting continuity that disappears the moment you leave.

• Lower DNS TTLs to 300 seconds at least a week before migrating.
• Keep the old host running until propagation completes on all resolvers.
• Warm the new IP for mail by ramping volume over 2–4 weeks.

The practical rule: budget one IPv4 per public-facing service that needs isolation, push everything else to free IPv6, and audit the add-on at every renewal. A $2/month address looks small until you multiply it across three years and four servers. Confirm current bundle policies in our provider comparison before you sign — the difference between included and metered is often larger than the plan price gap itself.