The short version: I pulled 33 plans from 15 providers, and 26 of them have prices I verified on the provider's own page or API. For each one I added back what the sticker price leaves out: IPv4, backups and bandwidth overage. Here is what came out (as of 2026-10-26, at 2 TB of egress a month):

2 vCPU / 4 GB: the cheapest verified plan is OVHcloud VPS-1 at $4.54/mo . The most expensive is Linode 4 GB at $29/mo . That is a $24.46/mo gap, or $294 a year , for the same headline specs.

4 vCPU / 8 GB: the cheapest is OVHcloud VPS-2 at $8.50/mo . The most expensive is DreamHost Stack 16 at $34.99/mo . That gap is $26.49/mo, or $318 a year .

Renewal jumps: DreamHost Stack 16 goes up $12/mo at renewal (+52%). DreamHost Stack 4 goes up $7/mo (+78%).…