Compare / Unkey vs OVHcloud VPS
Unkey vs OVHcloud VPS
Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — Unkey checked 2026-08-06, OVHcloud checked 2026-08-06.
The short version
Unkey and OVHcloud VPS split our comparison — the right pick depends on what your project values.
Price OVHcloud VPS
OVHcloud VPS is cheaper at every stage we model — about €19.96/mo even for a growing project.
Ease Unkey
Unkey is easier to get running: connect GitHub for automatic builds and branch previews, or deploy a Docker image from the Unkey CLI.
Control OVHcloud VPS
OVHcloud VPS gives you more control over the stack — the flip side of the convenience trade.
Features Unkey
Unkey comes out ahead on 7 of the 15 features we track, versus 4.
What developers say about this matchup
We couldn't find a substantive first-person discussion comparing this exact pair. We leave the section empty instead of filling it with vendor marketing or generic SEO comparisons.
At a glance
| Unkey | OVHcloud VPS | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Production APIs that want hosting, gateway policies, API keys, rate limits, and request analytics in one place. | Traffic-heavy European projects that want unmetered bandwidth and an included IPv4 at rock-bottom prices. |
| How deploys work | Connect GitHub for automatic builds and branch previews, or deploy a Docker image from the Unkey CLI. | You get root on a bare server: pick a distro or an app image (Docker, WordPress, cPanel) and set everything up yourself. |
| The tradeoff | It is a young, API-specific platform with metered billing, ephemeral storage, and no managed database. | Entirely self-managed, headline prices need a commitment, and support below premium tiers is slow. |
| Free tier | None | None |
What you'd realistically pay
Unkey OVHcloud VPS
| Project stage | Unkey | OVHcloud VPS | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just starting | ≈$5/mo Starter — The $5 minimum includes $5 of usage, enough for a small, lightly used API. | ≈€3.81/mo VPS-1 — From-price with commitment. 2 shared vCores, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe, unlimited traffic at 500 Mbps. | OVHcloud VPS |
| Steady traffic | ≈$18/mo Starter + usage — About 0.5 active vCPU and 1 GB of memory running continuously before egress or active-key charges. | ≈€10.40/mo VPS-3 — From-price with commitment. 6 shared vCores, 12 GB RAM, 100 GB NVMe, unlimited traffic at 2 Gbps. | OVHcloud VPS |
| Growing | ≈$50/mo Business — The $50 minimum becomes usage credit and raises per-instance limits to 16 vCPU and 32 GB of RAM. | ≈€19.96/mo VPS-4 — From-price with commitment. 8 shared vCores, 24 GB RAM, 200 GB NVMe, unlimited traffic at 3 Gbps. | OVHcloud VPS |
Unkey pricing notes
- Usage rates are $0.000006944 per vCPU-second, $0.000003472 per GB-second of memory, $0.00000006 per GB-second of ephemeral disk, and $0.05 per GB of egress.
- API-key authentication through the gateway adds $0.002 per active key each month. The plan minimum is included usage credit rather than an extra charge on top.
- Log retention is 3 days on Starter, 7 days on Pro, and 14 days on Business.
OVHcloud VPS pricing notes
- Prices are ex-VAT "from" prices requiring the longest commitment — month-to-month is noticeably higher.
- Monthly prepaid subscription only; there is no hourly billing on the VPS line.
- Daily backups are included free; snapshots cost from €0.30/month extra.
Our ratings
Ease of use Unkey
Pricing clarity Unkey
Free tier
Scaling Unkey
Control OVHcloud VPS
Feature by feature
Unkey wins 7, OVHcloud VPS wins 4, with 4 even.
Deploy workflow
| Unkey | OVHcloud VPS | |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy from Git push | Yes Connect GitHub; pushes to the default branch deploy production automatically. | No No deploy pipeline — bring your own CI or scripts. |
| Preview deploys | Yes Non-default branches and pull requests receive isolated preview deployments. | No Nothing built in. |
| Official CLI | Yes The Unkey CLI deploys local build contexts or pre-built container images. | Partial Full REST API and Terraform provider; no first-class official CLI like hcloud or doctl. |
| Instant rollbacks | Yes Rollbacks atomically switch traffic to a previous immutable deployment. | Partial Included daily backups and paid snapshots restore machines; no deploy-level rollback. |
Platform
| Unkey | OVHcloud VPS | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom domains + HTTPS | Yes Custom apex domains and subdomains include automatic TLS; plan limits apply. | Yes Point DNS at the server; TLS is yours via certbot or a proxy. |
| Built-in CDN / edge network | No The global gateway routes API traffic but is not a static-asset caching CDN. | Partial OVHcloud sells a separate CDN product; nothing is integrated with the VPS. |
| Serverless functions | No Applications run as container instances rather than per-request functions. | No Not a VPS feature. |
| Docker containers | Yes Build from a Dockerfile or deploy a pre-built image from a registry. | Yes Docker app image at install time, or install it yourself. |
| SSH / shell access | No The documented workflow exposes logs and metrics, not an interactive SSH shell. | Yes Full root SSH. |
| EU hosting region | Yes European deployment regions are available; Starter includes three regions and paid upgrades unlock all. | Yes France, Germany, Poland, and the UK — OVHcloud is EU-headquartered. |
Runtime & operations
| Unkey | OVHcloud VPS | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic scaling | Yes Horizontal autoscaling adjusts instance count from configured minimums and maximums based on CPU load. | No Manual plan upgrades only. |
| Scale to zero | Partial Preview environments sleep automatically when idle; apps can also be stopped and started manually. | No A monthly subscription bills until cancelled, powered off or not. |
| Scheduled jobs | No There is no documented first-class scheduler for cron jobs. | Yes Classic cron on the box. |
| Managed database | No No managed database is included; connect an external database service. | Partial Managed databases exist on OVH Public Cloud (from ~$64/month) — a separate product, not part of the VPS. |
| Logs & metrics built in | Yes Runtime logs, CPU and memory metrics, request analytics, and gateway decisions appear in the dashboard. | Partial Basic usage graphs in the control panel; app-level monitoring is yours. |
Watch out for
Unkey
- Unkey only launched public app hosting in 2026, so its production track record is much shorter than established platforms such as Heroku, Render, or Railway.
- The monthly plan price is a minimum with matching usage credit, not a compute bundle: CPU, memory, ephemeral disk, egress, and active keys are metered separately.
- Storage is ephemeral and there is no managed database, so persistent data must live with another provider.
OVHcloud
- The advertised prices are "from" prices tied to the longest commitment — rolling month-to-month costs more.
- Traffic is unlimited in Europe and North America only; Asia-Pacific locations have 500 GB – 3 TB quotas, then throttle to 10 Mbps.
- Standard-tier support is slow and famously unhelpful for anything OS-level — you are expected to manage the server yourself.
- OVHcloud US is a separate legal entity with its own accounts — easy to sign up in the wrong portal.
Read the full reviews: Unkey and OVHcloud. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.