AWS Lightsail vs OVHcloud VPS
OVHcloud VPS is cheaper across every workload modelled here.
List prices checked
Rate cards side by side
Only the axes at least one of them bills on. A dash means that provider does not charge for it.
| Billing axis | AWS Lightsail | OVHcloud VPS | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | $5.00/mo | $4.20/mo | 1.2× OVHcloud VPS |
| Data transfer out | $0.090/GB | Free | — |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | — |
Source: Amazon Web Services pricing (May 2026) · OVHcloud pricing (May 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.
Monthly cost for three real workloads
The rate cards applied to identical usage. This is where the winner changes.
| Workload | AWS Lightsail | OVHcloud VPS | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process. | $5.00 | $4.20 | OVHcloud VPSsaves $0.80/mo (16%) |
| Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers. | $10 | $8.40 | OVHcloud VPSsaves $1.60/mo (16%) |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | $725 | $4.20 | OVHcloud VPSsaves $721/mo (99%) |
Workload definitions are identical on every comparison page, so figures here can be read against any other pair in the same category.
What each one is for
AWS Lightsail
by Amazon Web Services
Amazon's flat-rate answer to DigitalOcean, bundling generous transfer into a fixed monthly price. Overage reverts to standard EC2 egress rates, which is where it stops being cheap.
Free tier: Three months free on the smallest plan
OVHcloud VPS
by OVHcloud
European VPS instances with unmetered outbound traffic, which removes egress from the bill entirely and makes total cost trivially predictable at the low end.
Free tier: Unmetered traffic on most VPS plans
Common questions
- Is AWS Lightsail or OVHcloud VPS cheaper in 2026?
- OVHcloud VPS is cheaper in all 3 modelled workloads.
- What is the difference in egress cost between AWS Lightsail and OVHcloud VPS?
- OVHcloud VPS does not charge for data transfer out at all, while AWS Lightsail charges $0.090 per GB. On a read-heavy workload that difference is the entire comparison.
- Which has the better free tier, AWS Lightsail or OVHcloud VPS?
- Both publish one. AWS Lightsail: Three months free on the smallest plan. OVHcloud VPS: Unmetered traffic on most VPS plans.
- What do these estimates not include?
- Committed-use and reserved discounts, regional price variation, per-request API charges, support plans, and minimum retention periods. All of those move real invoices, sometimes by a lot. These figures compare published list prices for the same workload, which is the comparison the rate cards alone cannot give you.