What a virtual machine costs

A virtual machine is charged by the hour, from credit you have added to your account beforehand. This page says what you need on your account before you create a VM, what the VM costs while it exists, and which extras cost money.

How a VM is charged

• Doprax is prepaid. You add credit first. Charges are taken from it. There is no overdraft and no bill at the end of the month.
• You pay for the time the VM exists. Every plan has a price per month. The price per hour is that price divided by 720. A VM that you delete after three days costs three days.
• A stopped VM costs the same as a running one. Its disk and its IP address stay reserved for you. To stop paying for a VM, delete it.

The create page shows both prices for every plan, per hour and per month. The ProVM plans are listed on Plans and prices. The plans of the other providers are on the Create Virtual Machine page.

What you need before you can create a VM

1. A minimum available balance. Today that is $1.00. The amount is a setting of the platform and can change; the API reports it as min_required_cents in the answer of /api/v2/finance/available-balance/.

2. For a plan of about $30 a month or more: 10% of its monthly price. For a plan of $60 a month you need $6.00 available. If you have less, the VM is not created and the message gives both amounts: what the plan costs per month and what you need.

3. Credit for more than 2 days. When your credit will last 2 days or less at what your services cost now, the create page shows “Runway is critically low” and does not let you create another service until you add credit.

4. Room in your quota. An account can have 10 virtual machines by default. You can ask for more under Account, Security, with Request quota increase.

Your available balance is your credit minus what your services have used since the last charge. It is shown on Billing, Billing overview.

Extras that cost money

The plan price covers the VM, its disk and its public IP address. These things are charged on top:

Extra	Price	Where it applies
A snapshot	$0.20 once when it is created, and $0.20 per GB per month for as long as you keep it	Every provider
An additional IPv4 address	$1 once for setup, and $1 a month while it is attached	ProVM only, up to 5 per VM
A change of the IP address	$4.50 per change	Hetzner only
Outbound traffic beyond the plan’s allowance	$0.02 per GB on Vultr and DigitalOcean; from $0.22 per 100 GB on Hetzner	Vultr, DigitalOcean, Hetzner
Outbound traffic on Google Cloud	$0.22 to $0.36 per GB, from the first GB	Google Cloud
A second automatic subdomain on a VM	$0.50 each; the first one on a VM is free	Every provider

The monthly prices in this table are charged by the hour, like the plan.

• Snapshots: the dashboard shows both prices in the Create snapshot dialog and asks you to accept them. The storage price is charged until you delete the snapshot. See Snapshots.
• Additional IPs: the price is shown in the Add IP dialog. See Additional IPs.
• IP change: the price is shown next to the Change IP button. See Change the IP address.
• Traffic: inbound traffic is free everywhere. Outbound traffic is free on ProVM, OVH and Gcore and is not charged on Scaleway. See Traffic.
• Domains: adding your own domain to a VM is free. See Add domains.

The price list of one VM is on its Resize tab, under Pricing components.

When the credit runs out

You are warned when your credit will last 7 days or less, and again at 2 days. At zero your VMs are stopped and then frozen, and they start again by themselves after you add credit. The full sequence is on When your credit runs low.

A VM you no longer need keeps costing money for as long as it exists, running or stopped. Delete it: see Start, stop and delete.