---
title: "Sblurp server sizes and costs"
description: "Which server size to rent for a Sblurp community and what it costs each month: measured limits per size and prices at Fly.io, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, OVHcloud and AWS Lightsail."
nav: "How much does it cost?"
doc_version: 4
last_updated: 2026-10-18
---

# How much does it cost?

Most communities pay $4 to $8 a month for their server. Backups are free for most communities.

| Your community | Server to rent | About |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 250 people chatting at the same time | The smallest one | $4 a month |
| Up to 2,000 people chatting at the same time | 1 CPU and 1 GB of memory | $6 to $8 a month |

Only people with Sblurp open count. A community of 5,000 members usually has far fewer people online at the same time. A bigger server than 2 CPUs does not hold many more people.

Examples of the smallest server are a Fly.io `shared-cpu-1x` machine with 512 MB and a 1 GB volume ($3.89), or a DigitalOcean Basic droplet with 512 MiB ($4). Backups to Cloudflare R2 cost $0 while you store less than 10 GB. See [Backups](/docs/backups).

> Your community's data lives wherever you put your Sblurp server. We do not market Sblurp to the EU in particular, but we must point this out: if you put your server in the EU, all data except accounts lives there, and only there. Accounts stay on sblurp.chat in the United States. See [Your data](/docs/data#where-the-data-lives).

## Monthly prices

Prices were read from the provider pages on 2026-10-16. OVHcloud prices were read on 2026-10-18. They are in USD, for a month of 730 hours, without tax. Prices change, so look at the provider page before you buy.

| Size | Fly.io | DigitalOcean droplet | Hetzner Cloud (EU) | OVHcloud VPS (US and EU) | AWS Lightsail |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.25 CPU / 256 MB | `shared-cpu-1x` 512 MB: $3.74 | Basic 1 vCPU / 512 MiB: $4 | nothing smaller than CPX02 (1 vCPU / 1 GB): $8.09 | nothing smaller than VPS-1 (2 vCPU / 4 GB): $5.35 | 0.5 GB: $5 |
| 1 CPU / 1 GB | `shared-cpu-1x` 1 GB: $6.79 | Basic 1 vCPU / 1 GiB: $6 | CPX02 1 vCPU / 1 GB: $8.09 | VPS-1 2 vCPU / 4 GB: $5.35 | 1 GB: $7 |
| 2 CPU / 2 GB | `shared-cpu-2x` 2 GB: $13.58 | Basic 2 vCPU / 4 GiB: $24 | CPX22 2 vCPU / 4 GB: $22.99 | VPS-1 2 vCPU / 4 GB: $5.35 | 2 GB (2 vCPU): $12 |
| 4 CPU / 8 GB | `shared-cpu-4x` 8 GB: $51.50 | Basic 4 vCPU / 8 GiB: $48 | CCX23 4 dedicated / 16 GB: $101.49 | VPS-2 4 vCPU / 8 GB: $10 | 8 GB (2 vCPU): $44 |

What the prices include:

- **Fly.io:** add a volume for the data at $0.15 per GB per month. A 1 GB volume holds about a million messages. A shared IPv4 address and TLS certificates are free. Fly.io manages the operating system for you. See [Fly.io](/docs/fly).
- **DigitalOcean:** the price includes a 10 GiB disk, an IPv4 address and at least 500 GiB of traffic. You install Docker and keep the operating system up to date. See [Any VPS](/docs/vps).
- **Hetzner:** the CPX02 price includes IPv4. For the other sizes, add about $0.60 for IPv4. In the US, the smallest size is CPX11 (2 vCPU / 2 GB) at $20.49.
- **OVHcloud:** the price includes an IPv4 address, an NVMe disk (40 GB on VPS-1), a daily backup and unlimited traffic. These are the prices with no commitment for a US account. With a 12-month commitment, VPS-1 is $4.54. In the EU, VPS-1 is €4.49 and VPS-2 is €8.49. The same plans are sold in US and EU data centers. See [Any VPS](/docs/vps).
- **AWS Lightsail:** the price includes the disk, an IPv4 address and at least 1 TB of traffic. Its CPUs are burstable.

Use a hosting company with a persistent disk: [Render](/docs/render) or [Railway](/docs/railway) with a disk, [Fly.io](/docs/fly) with a volume, or a VPS. Most other managed container services, for example Cloud Run, App Runner and Azure Container Apps, have no disk that keeps SQLite safe, or they close long connections after a few minutes.

## Storage

The server stores about 757 MB per million messages, plus uploaded files. Cloudflare R2 backups cost $0 while you store less than 10 GB, so most communities stay in the free tier for years.

## Server sizes

"People online" means people who have Sblurp open at the same time. "Stays fast" means messages arrive in under half a second, even when the chat is busy. Measured on 2026-10-17.

| CPU and memory | Stays fast up to | Gets slow at |
|---|---|---|
| 0.25 CPU, 256 MB | 250 people online | 750 to 1,000 |
| 1 CPU, 1 GB | 2,000 people online | 3,000 |
| 2 CPU, 2 GB | 2,000 people online | 2,500 to 4,000 |
| 4 CPU, 8 GB | 3,000 people online | 4,000 |

Memory is never what runs out first, so you do not need to pay for more memory. A launch day, when many people join at once, needs more than a normal day.

## Sitemap

- [Sblurp: chat for communities](https://sblurp.chat/index.md): Sblurp is group chat with channels, threads and roles. Each community runs on its own server, and one Sblurp account signs you in to all of them.
- [About Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/about.md): Why Sblurp exists: chat for communities that each run their own server, with no ads, no unasked-for AI and an honest word on encryption.
- [Privacy at Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/privacy.md): What sblurp.chat stores about you, what it never stores, what it shares with communities you join, and how to get a copy or delete it.
- [Terms of use](https://sblurp.chat/terms.md): The terms for a sblurp.chat account: who can sign up, what you must not do, and what we do and do not promise. A first draft.
- [Create your Sblurp account](https://sblurp.chat/signup.md): Create a Sblurp account: one account for every Sblurp community you join. You need an email, a username, a password and to be 13 or older.
- [Sign in to Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/login.md): Sign in to your Sblurp account with your email or username and password, or with a passkey. One account works in every Sblurp community.
- [Reset your password](https://sblurp.chat/forgot.md): Forgot your Sblurp password? Type the email you signed up with and we send a link to choose a new one. The link works once, for one hour.
- [Sblurp docs](https://sblurp.chat/docs.md): Sblurp documentation: how accounts and communities work, how to run a community server, how to add bots, and the full API reference.
- [Accounts and communities](https://sblurp.chat/docs/accounts.md): How a Sblurp account relates to the communities you join: what sblurp.chat keeps, what each community server sees, and what stays private.
- [Join a community](https://sblurp.chat/docs/join.md): Join a Sblurp community: add it by address or invite link, answer its questions, choose what to share, and join.
- [Sblurp glossary](https://sblurp.chat/docs/glossary.md): The words the Sblurp docs use, from account and community to issuer, track, bot token and seq, each with a link to the page that explains it.
- [Run a Sblurp community](https://sblurp.chat/docs/self-host.md): Run a Sblurp community on your own server: one small program and one data folder. What you need, how to start it, and what it stores.
- [Run a server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/create.md): For developers: start your own Sblurp community. Run the open-source server, join it first to become the owner, then set it up and invite people.
- [Set up a server with AI](https://sblurp.chat/docs/ai.md): Not a developer? Ask an AI assistant such as Claude to set up your Sblurp community server.
- [Sblurp server sizes and costs](https://sblurp.chat/docs/hosting.md): Which server size to rent for a Sblurp community and what it costs each month: measured limits per size and prices at Fly.io, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, OVHcloud and AWS Lightsail.
- [Run Sblurp on Render](https://sblurp.chat/docs/render.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Render: one Starter web service with a persistent disk, the released image, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2.
- [Run Sblurp on Railway](https://sblurp.chat/docs/railway.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Railway: one service from the released image, a volume for /data, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2.
- [Run Sblurp on Fly.io](https://sblurp.chat/docs/fly.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Fly.io: one always-on machine with a volume, h2c streaming, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2.
- [Run Sblurp on any VPS](https://sblurp.chat/docs/vps.md): Run a Sblurp community server on a small virtual server from Hetzner, OVHcloud, Akamai Linode, Vultr, DigitalOcean or any other host, with Docker Compose.
- [Run Sblurp with Docker and Compose](https://sblurp.chat/docs/docker.md): Run a Sblurp community server with Docker Compose and Caddy: the files, the settings, where the data lives, and how to run it behind your own proxy.
- [Run Sblurp with Podman](https://sblurp.chat/docs/podman.md): Run a Sblurp community server with a Podman Quadlet file, with daily automatic updates that roll back when a new image does not start.
- [Sblurp server configuration](https://sblurp.chat/docs/configuration.md): Every flag and environment variable of the Sblurp community server, with defaults, plus the backup variables of the container image and the built-in limits.
- [TLS and reverse proxies for Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/proxies.md): Put Caddy, nginx or Cloudflare in front of a Sblurp community server without breaking live streams: h2c, no buffering, no compression.
- [Back up a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/backups.md): Back up a Sblurp community server: Litestream copies the database to Cloudflare R2 within 10 seconds, an encrypted backup tool copies the files, or make a plain copy. How to restore.
- [Update a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/updates.md): Release tracks for the Sblurp server image, the daily update check, manual and automatic updates, and how to roll back.
- [Verify a Sblurp release](https://sblurp.chat/docs/provenance.md): Check that a Sblurp server image was built by the public release workflow, with GitHub attestations or cosign.
- [Troubleshooting a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/troubleshooting.md): Fix common problems with a Sblurp community server: sign-in fails, messages arrive late, certificates, file links, and where the logs are.
- [Invites in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/invites.md): Make a Sblurp community invite only, create invite links with an expiry and a use limit, and revoke them.
- [Moderation and roles in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/moderation.md): Permissions in a Sblurp community (owner, admin, moderator, member), custom roles that limit channels, channel modes, kicks and bans.
- [Safety in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/safety.md): Who can read your messages, how to protect your account, what to do about unwanted messages, how to report a message, what moderators can do, age rules, and how to reach sblurp.chat.
- [Your data in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/data.md): What sblurp.chat stores about your account, what a community server stores, who controls each, how long data is kept, backups, export and deletion.
- [Sblurp bots](https://sblurp.chat/docs/bots.md): Two ways to add a bot to a Sblurp community: a JavaScript plugin on the server, or a program anywhere that uses the API with a bot token.
- [Sblurp bot tokens](https://sblurp.chat/docs/bot-tokens.md): Make a Sblurp bot with a token, run the example bot, and call the API from any language: subscribe to events and reply to mentions.
- [Connect an AI agent to Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/agents.md): How to connect a self-hosted AI agent, such as OpenClaw, NanoClaw or Hermes Agent, to a Sblurp community with a bot token. No built-in connector exists yet.
- [Use Sblurp from Claude Code and other MCP clients](https://sblurp.chat/docs/mcp.md): Add a Sblurp community to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, VS Code or another MCP client by URL, sign in with your sblurp.chat account, and let the agent read and post as you.
- [Sblurp plugins](https://sblurp.chat/docs/plugins.md): Write a Sblurp bot as one JavaScript file and install it in the app, with the API or in the plugins folder: hooks for joins, messages, slash commands and timers, replies, limits and the dice example.
- [Sblurp API: protocol and transport](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api.md): How clients and bots talk to a Sblurp community server: Connect RPC over HTTP, the proto contract, JSON and binary bodies, auth, streaming and versioning.
- [Sblurp API explorer](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/explorer.md): Browse and try every call of the Sblurp community server API in your browser, from the OpenAPI 3.1 description in openapi.json.
- [Sblurp API: sign-in and tokens](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/auth.md): How sign-in works across Sblurp: OAuth 2.0 with PKCE at sblurp.chat, per-server access tokens, JWT claims, refresh token rotation, JWKS, and bot tokens.
- [Sblurp API: events](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/events.md): The Sblurp live event stream: Subscribe, sequence numbers, replay and resync, heartbeats, every event kind, who receives it, and unread counts.
- [Sblurp API: uploads and files](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/files.md): The plain HTTP endpoints of a Sblurp community server: uploads, signed file URLs, custom emoji, invite links and the health check.
- [Sblurp API: errors and rate limits](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/errors.md): Error codes the Sblurp community server returns, what each one means for a client, and the rate limits for people and bots.
- [ServerService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/server-service.md): Every ServerService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields.
- [ChatService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/chat-service.md): Every ChatService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields.
- [BotService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/bot-service.md): Every BotService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields.
- [API types](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/types.md): The messages and enums the Sblurp community server API shares between calls, with every field.