Price for similar resources
LightNode lists its entry hourly plan with 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB NVMe and 1 TB of bandwidth at $0.012 per hour, about $7.71 per month. The DataPasa VPS-2 has the same CPU and memory with 32 GB NVMe and 32 TB of traffic for $3.54 per month. LightNode gives you more disk, DataPasa costs less and includes far more traffic.
If 1 GB of RAM is enough, DataPasa VPS-1 costs $1.81 per month, roughly a quarter of a cent per hour. That suits a small bot, a monitoring agent or a test box. For 2 vCPU and 4 GB RAM, DataPasa VPS-3 costs $7.09 per month, while LightNode lists a 2 vCPU, 4 GB plan at $14.70.
How hourly billing works on each side
LightNode charges by the hour with no monthly contract and caps billing at 672 hours, which is 28 days, per calendar month. Any extra days in that month are free, so a full month never costs more than the monthly rate. It also offers monthly billing if you prefer a fixed price.
DataPasa charges the first hour when you order and every following hour in advance from a prepaid USD balance. The monthly price shown is 730 hourly charges, and there is no setup fee or minimum term. Delete the server and charging stops. You get an email when your balance drops below 30% of the monthly cost of your servers.
Payment methods and crypto
LightNode lists Visa, Mastercard, American Express, UnionPay, Alipay, Google Pay and PayPal as accepted payment methods, which makes it convenient for customers in Asia who use Alipay. Transactions are made in US dollars or Hong Kong dollars. Cryptocurrency is not on that list. LightNode does not publicly describe its sign-up verification rules on the pages we checked.
DataPasa accepts cards through Stripe, including Apple Pay and Google Pay, plus about 100 crypto coin and network pairs through Cryptomus: USDT on eight networks, USDC on five, BTC, XMR, LTC, SOL and many tokens. You sign up with an email, and identity checks happen only if a crypto deposit is flagged by AML screening.
When LightNode is the better choice
LightNode runs in more than 40 locations across five continents, including the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. If your users are in Dubai, Bangkok, Sao Paulo or Johannesburg, a server close to them matters more than a lower price in Germany. LightNode also lists Windows on its entry plans and offers new users up to $15 in credit.
DataPasa is the better fit for projects that serve Europe, need plenty of traffic on a small budget or are funded with crypto. Windows is available on DataPasa from VPS-4 on request through support. If your application sends a lot of data, such as file downloads or media, the traffic allowance can matter more than the hourly rate. Compare where your users are, how much traffic you expect and how you plan to pay.