Development Cloud VPS
Low-cost, on-demand cloud environments for everything that ships before production.
What is Development?
Development brings the elasticity of the cloud to non-production work. Spin up a fully isolated environment in seconds, use it for as long as you need, and tear it down when you are done — paying only for the hours it existed.
It is the disciplined, cost-efficient choice for test and QA environments, proofs of concept, training, and ephemeral preview builds. Modest resources and the lowest hourly rate in the catalog mean experimentation never carries production-sized cost.
Because environments are disposable and API-driven, they fit naturally into modern workflows — a fresh environment per pull request, a sandbox per engineer, a throwaway cluster for a workshop. No idle fleet, no capital tied up, no waste. Many Development sizes are IPv6-first, with an optional IPv4 address when a workload needs one.
Best for
- Test, QA, and ephemeral preview environments
- Proofs of concept and internal demos
- Developer sandboxes and training environments
- Low-traffic internal tools and dashboards
- CI scratch environments that exist for minutes
- Learning, evaluation, and architecture spikes
When to choose another type
Development sizes are not intended for production traffic or workloads that require guaranteed performance. Promote anything customer-facing to General Purpose or High Performance.
Compare all locations →Why teams run Development in the cloud
Enterprise-grade, battle-tested infrastructure without enterprise procurement. Spin up resilient, high-availability instances in seconds, scale on demand, and pay only for what you use.
Pay for hours, not months
An environment that lives for an afternoon costs the price of an afternoon. The cloud bills by the hour and stops the moment you destroy it.
Disposable by design
Provision and tear down in seconds via the API — ideal for per-PR previews, CI scratch, and short-lived experiments.
Production parity, lower cost
Run the same operating systems and stack as production at a fraction of the price, so tests reflect reality.
Zero idle spend
No standing fleet quietly accruing cost. Capacity exists only while you are using it.
What real projects cost
Billing is hourly, with the first hour charged on deploy and a monthly price ceiling on every plan. Network transfer is included up to each plan's allowance; beyond it, usage is billed at a flat $0.09 per GB. Here is how that works out for a few representative Development workloads.
Pull-request preview environments
Every pull request spins up a disposable environment for review and is destroyed on merge. Across a month that totals roughly 300 instance-hours.
On a 1 vCPU · 1 GB instance at $0.0070/hr, running it for about 300 hours costs roughly $2.10 — you pay only for the hours it exists, then destroy it and billing stops.
A two-day engineering workshop
A hands-on training environment for a cohort of engineers, live for two working days and then torn down.
On a 1 vCPU · 1 GB instance at $0.0070/hr, running it for about 16 hours costs roughly $0.11 — you pay only for the hours it exists, then destroy it and billing stops.
A month-long proof of concept
A spike to validate a new architecture, left running continuously for a month before a go or no-go decision.
On a 1 vCPU · 1 GB instance at $0.0070/hr, running it for about 730 hours costs roughly $5.11 — you pay only for the hours it exists, then destroy it and billing stops.
These sizes suit low and intermittent traffic. For predictable production load, move to a General Purpose plan with a larger transfer allowance. Figures are illustrative; your costs depend on the plan you choose and your actual usage.
A production-grade cloud foundation
Every Development instance runs on the same enterprise-ready, fault-tolerant platform — global reach, ironclad reliability, predictable economics, and the granular control your teams expect.
Always-on reliability
Resilient, self-healing infrastructure with redundant power and networking, backed by a published service-level agreement.
Global low-latency footprint
Data centers on six continents — 2 countries and growing — on a high-throughput backbone, so workloads run close to your users and meet data-residency mandates.
Elastic, hourly economics
Provision in seconds, scale on demand, and pay by the hour with a monthly price ceiling on every plan. No contracts, no lock-in, zero capital expenditure.
Enterprise networking & control
High-bandwidth IPv4 and complimentary IPv6, generous included transfer, plus full root access and an API-first workflow built for automation.
Questions enterprises ask
- Why are these so inexpensive?
- They allocate modest resources and prioritize a low hourly rate over performance ceilings — precisely what non-production work needs. You pay only for the hours an environment exists.
- Are they safe for production?
- No. They are sized for testing and experimentation, without the performance characteristics of production classes. Validate here, then deploy the real workload on a production-grade instance.
- Do they include a public IP address?
- Many Development sizes are IPv6-first. IPv6 is included at no cost; a dedicated IPv4 address is available as a paid add-on when you need one.
- How fast can we stand one up?
- In seconds, through the dashboard or the API for verified accounts. Use it, then destroy it when you are done — billing stops immediately.
- Does it fit our CI/CD?
- Yes. Development instances are API-driven, so you can create a fresh environment per pull request or build and tear it down automatically.
Launch a Development server today
From $0.0070/hr, deployed in seconds, in 2 countries worldwide.