Algo hosting VPS costs have jumped by as much as 144% since April, as AI-driven demand for memory and compute squeezes the same infrastructure that retail traders rely on to keep automated strategies running around the clock. For anyone running an Expert Advisor or cBot on a rented server, the increases sharpen a question that was always lurking in the background: who actually pays for that uptime?
Algo Hosting VPS Costs: Who Pays the Bill?
The answer splits three ways. A trader can rent a virtual private server (VPS, a cloud-based computer that runs continuously without the trader needing to leave their own machine switched on) directly. A brokerage can subsidise one in exchange for trading volume. Or a platform vendor can absorb the cost inside its own software.
Each route carries a different trade-off, and the price shock at the infrastructure layer is making those trade-offs more concrete.
How Far Prices Have Actually Moved
Hetzner raised the monthly price of its CPX22 cloud server in Germany and Finland from EUR 7.99 to EUR 19.49 on 15 June 2026, a rise of 143.9%. That change applies to new orders and to existing servers that customers rescale; instances left unchanged retain their previous pricing, according to Hetzner’s official price-adjustment documentation.
The CPX22 increase is not the steepest in Hetzner’s June round. Its dedicated-vCPU CCX13 rose from EUR 15.99 to EUR 42.99, a 169% increase, and the CCX23 climbed from EUR 31.49 to EUR 85.99, up 173%, both on the same new-orders-only basis, according to WZ-IT’s analysis of the June 2026 CPX/CCX changes. Heise Online attributed the move to “still extremely high procurement costs for new hardware.” This was not Hetzner’s first increase in 2026: an earlier round on 1 April 2026 had already raised cloud prices by up to 37% in Germany and Finland, and that earlier round did affect existing customers, per Webhosting.today’s review of Hetzner’s 2026 price rounds.
OVHcloud raised its entry VPS-1 plan from EUR 4.49 to EUR 6.49 (up 44.5%) and its VPS-6 from EUR 48.99 to EUR 72.99 (up 49.0%), with new prices applying after the current contractual period. Leaseweb set an average 20% increase for selected new VPS contracts from 1 August, with its US entry plan rising from $3.50 to $6.99. Leaseweb cited higher memory and storage costs. OVHcloud pointed to memory manufacturers redirecting capacity toward GPUs and high-bandwidth computing. Micron told investors separately that AI demand was outpacing industry supply for memory and storage.
Worth noting: these are generic infrastructure products. A trading VPS typically bundles Windows licensing, technical support, backups and a location close to a broker’s execution servers, so the headline increases are not a direct read-across to what traders or brokers pay for managed hosting.
Brokerage Subsidies Tie Hosting to Volume
MetaTrader users can rent a virtual terminal through the MQL5 network for $15 for one month, falling to an equivalent $10 a month on an annual plan. The service migrates Expert Advisors and charts but does not provide direct server access and prohibits DLL calls (software extensions that many advanced strategies require).
Some brokerages cover that cost for active clients. Pepperstone’s published terms require at least $1 million of trading volume over 60 days to qualify for sponsored VPS costs. FP Markets and IC Markets use monthly lot thresholds in their own programmes. The subsidy is essentially funded by the spread or commission revenue the trader generates, so the hosting cost does not disappear, it just moves off the invoice.
Dedicated infrastructure providers have been picking up new business on the back of this demand. Beeks Financial Cloud Group (BKS) disclosed a five-year Proximity Cloud contract with a large FX broker valued at £2.1 million, per the company’s official RNS announcement on Investegate. Across the year ended 30 June 2025, Beeks announced approximately $10 million of Proximity Cloud contracts, spanning brokerage and fintech firms across the UAE, as disclosed in its London Stock Exchange trading update. Half-year revenues for the period ended 31 December 2025 were expected at £14.7 million, down from £15.8 million in the comparable period, reflecting lower up-front Proximity Cloud revenue, according to a Beeks update via Investor Meet Company.
When the Platform Absorbs the Cost
cTrader takes a different approach. ‘Spotware covers the cost,’ Andrei Datsenko, General Manager at cTrader, said. The platform’s Cloud Execution feature lets compatible cBots run continuously without the trader managing a separate VPS. Bots can be started and monitored through cTrader’s mobile, web, Windows or Mac applications, and continue running when the trader’s device is offline. Up to ten concurrent cloud instances are permitted on a live account, with one allowed on a demo account; the demo instance pauses after seven days but can be restarted.
‘The server location for a Cloud cBot is selected automatically based on the broker,’ Datsenko said. Traders cannot choose a region, and no numerical latency target or uptime commitment was provided.
The platform-hosted model has real limits. cTrader Cloud operates in a Linux environment and excludes Windows-specific interfaces, runtime-loaded standalone DLLs and ordinary HTTP requests. Local files are cleared when an instance stops or is deleted. Strategies that rely on external processes, Windows components or multiple trading terminals will still need a conventional VPS. TradeLocker Studio currently requires the user’s computer to stay on and the application to remain open for continuous operation.
With VPS infrastructure costs still rising and Northflank’s analysis of Hetzner’s pricing trajectory suggesting multipliers of up to 2.75x on some shared-vCPU lines, the pressure on all three parts of this market, traders, brokers and platforms, looks set to continue. The next round to watch is Leaseweb’s August implementation date, when the new contract pricing kicks in and traders on expiring agreements will face their first real renewal decision.
