Price for similar resources
The entry hourly plan at LightNode is a single vCPU with 2 GB of memory, 50 GB NVMe and 1 TB of bandwidth, priced at $0.012 an hour, close to $7.71 a month. DataPasa VPS-2 matches the CPU and memory, adds 32 TB of traffic on 32 GB NVMe, and costs $3.54 a month. LightNode gives you more disk, DataPasa costs less and includes far more traffic.
Need only 1 GB of memory? VPS-1 is $1.81 a month, about a quarter of a cent each hour, enough for a small bot, a monitoring agent or a test box. One step up, a 2 vCPU, 4 GB machine is $7.09 a month as DataPasa VPS-3 and $14.70 on the LightNode price list.
How hourly billing works on each side
LightNode meters hours without a monthly contract and stops counting at 672 hours, or 28 days, in each calendar month. Days beyond that are free, so a full month never exceeds the monthly rate. A fixed monthly plan is available as well.
DataPasa has no cap but no invoice either. Each hour is paid before it runs, the first one at the moment of ordering, out of a prepaid USD balance. A listed monthly price equals 730 such hours, with no setup fee or minimum term. Remove the server and the hourly deductions end. A reminder email arrives as soon as funds dip under 30% of what your servers cost per month.
Payment methods and crypto
Visa, Mastercard, American Express, UnionPay, Alipay, Google Pay and PayPal are the methods LightNode lists, which is handy for customers in Asia who use Alipay. Transactions are made in US dollars or Hong Kong dollars. No cryptocurrency appears there. On the pages we looked at, LightNode does not describe how it verifies new accounts.
DataPasa covers the card side with Stripe, Apple Pay and Google Pay included, and the crypto side with Cryptomus and its roughly 100 coin and network pairs. That means USDT over eight networks, USDC over five, plus BTC, XMR, LTC, SOL and lots of tokens. Registration is an email, and we ask who you are only when AML screening flags a crypto deposit.
When LightNode is the better choice
LightNode operates more than 40 locations on five continents, with sites in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. When your audience sits in Dubai, Bangkok, Sao Paulo or Johannesburg, being near them beats a cheaper server in Germany. LightNode also lists Windows on its entry plans and gives new users credit worth as much as $15.
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.