Contabo Cloud VPS 4 for n8n: 4 vCPU / 8 GB at €5.50
The cheapest way to get 8 GB of RAM under a self-hosted n8n — if you can live with a provider that throttles 'unlimited' traffic and answers tickets slowly.
| docs & setup | 8/10 | |
|---|---|---|
| network terms | 6/10 | |
| price | 9.5/10 | |
| spec per euro | 9/10 | |
| support | 6.5/10 |
Short answer
If your plan is “run n8n on my own box and keep it cheap”, this is the row that wins on specs per euro: 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM and 100 GB SSD for €5.50/month for the first 24 months. That clears n8n’s documented 4 GB floor with room for the Docker task runner, and it is cheaper than the 4 GB offers at DigitalOcean ($24) and IONOS ($11 on a one-year term).
The catch is not the hardware. It is the fine print on traffic.
What you get
| Price | €5.50/month for the first 24 months (promotional term price) |
| Renewal | not published on the pricing page we read — ask before you commit |
| CPU / RAM | 4 vCPU / 8 GB |
| Disk | 100 GB SSD |
| Traffic | “Unlimited” — with a fair-use clause that permits throttling |
| Free trial | not published |
Where it stops being enough
- Queue mode. The moment you switch n8n to queue mode (the only mode the docs describe as scalable) you need Postgres and Redis alongside it, and binary data has to move to S3-compatible object storage. 8 GB still works, but plan the database from day one rather than migrating later.
- Traffic is metered by policy, not by the counter. Check how much of your webhook traffic is public-facing before you point a busy endpoint at a “fair use” clause.
- Support is a ticket queue. Nothing here is a managed service: if the box breaks at 2 a.m., that is your problem, not theirs.
Who this is for
Self-hosters who already accept that they are the sysadmin, want the most RAM per euro, and will not run a public-heavy webhook workload. If you want the same specs with faster support, the IONOS VPS M+ is the next row up; if you want to stop thinking about servers, the managed cloud tier is the honest answer.
Sources
- Contabo Cloud VPS 4 product page — contabo.com/en/vps (read 2026-09-12)
- Contabo general terms — unlimited traffic is subject to a fair-use clause that permits throttling (read 2026-09-12)
- n8n self-hosting documentation — 4 GB RAM / 2 vCPU is the floor once the Docker-based task runner is enabled (read 2026-09-12)