How we calculate our pricing claims
Last updated: 27 September 2026
Krova Cloud says its Cubes cost 42% to 69% less than an equivalent instance from AWS Lightsail, DigitalOcean, Vultr or Linode, depending on the size and which of the four you compare against. This page is the working behind that sentence: the rate card, the arithmetic, the competitor prices we measured against, the dates we checked them, and — importantly — what the comparison leaves out. Everything below is generated from the same pricing module the pricing page and the billing engine use, so it cannot drift from what you are actually charged.
On this page
1. The rate card
A Cube is billed per resource, per hour, and metered by the minute. There is no instance type and no plan: you pick vCPU, RAM and disk independently and pay for what those come to.
- $0.001 per vCPU, per hour
- $0.0025 per GB of RAM, per hour
- $0.00005 per GB of disk, per hour
RAM and disk are reserved 1:1 — there is no overselling and no thin provisioning, so the GB you are billed for is a GB that exists on the host. Powering a Cube off stops the vCPU and RAM charges immediately; the disk keeps billing at the same per-GB rate, because it is still occupying real storage.
2. The arithmetic
The hourly cost of a Cube is:
hourly = ((vcpu × 0.001) + (ramGb × 0.0025) + (diskGb × 0.00005)) × tierMultiplierMonthly figures on this site are hourly × 730 — 730 hours being the average month (8,760 hours ÷ 12). We use 730 rather than 720 or 744 so a monthly quote is neither flattering nor pessimistic depending on which month you read it in. Because billing is per-minute and usage-based, a monthly figure is an illustration of a Cube left running 24/7, never a subscription you are committed to.
3. Volume tiers
Larger Cubes get a lower effective rate through a multiplier applied to the whole hourly cost. The tiers are:
| vCPU range | Multiplier | Effective discount |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 vCPU | 1× | 0% off |
| 3–4 vCPU | 0.95× | 5% off |
| 5–8 vCPU | 0.85× | 15% off |
| 9+ vCPU | 0.8× | 20% off |
4. The comparison
Competitor prices were researched on 31 May 2026 and re-checked on 26 September 2026 against the live vendor pricing pages. For each size we take each named provider’s plan with the same amount of RAM and compare it with what the formula above produces for the Cube’s specification. Those plans carry at least as much disk as the Cube beside them, often more, and at the larger sizes some carry fewer vCPUs. We do not adjust for either difference.
| Specification | Krova Cloud/mo | Lightsail (IPv6-only)/mo | DO / Linode/mo | Saving vs DO / Linode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 vCPU · 4 GB RAM · 80 GB disk | $11.68 | $20.00 | $24.00 | 51% |
| 4 vCPU · 8 GB RAM · 100 GB disk | $20.11 | $40.00 | $48.00 | 58% |
| 8 vCPU · 16 GB RAM · 100 GB disk | $32.89 | $80.00 | $96.00 | 66% |
| 16 vCPU · 32 GB RAM · 100 GB disk | $58.98 | $160.00 | $192.00 | 69% |
The headline “up to 69%” is the largest value in the final column — Math.max over the rows above, not a figure chosen for effect. It is a ceiling against one provider at one size, which is why it is always worded “up to”.
The floor is a different number and a lower one. The final column compares against DigitalOcean and Linode; AWS Lightsail’s IPv6-only bundle and Vultr are both cheaper than that at 2 vCPU · 4 GB, so the smallest saving across all four named providers is 42%, not 51%. That is the number every “from” and every range on the site is generated from — see the Lightsail comparison for the per-provider arithmetic. Until 2026-09-19 the comparison tile on the pricing page published the higher floor directly above a link to that page, and the two disagreed by nine points.
5. What this comparison excludes
A price comparison is only useful if you know what it does not cover. This one deliberately excludes:
- Bandwidth and egress. Every provider prices transfer differently, and a Cube's allowance is not represented in the table above. A workload that moves a lot of data may compare differently.
- Committed-use and annual discounts. The competitor prices are list, on-demand, monthly. Several providers discount for annual prepayment; Krova Cloud has no commitment to discount, because there is no subscription.
- Free tiers and promotional credit. Introductory credit distorts the first months of any comparison, so none is counted on either side.
- Regional price variation. Competitor pricing can differ by region; we compare against their published US pricing.
- Features that are not like-for-like. Every DigitalOcean and Linode instance in this table comes with a public IPv4 address, which a Cube deliberately does not have. That is a genuine architectural difference, not a cost saving we are claiming credit for — see how isolation works. The Lightsail column is Lightsail’s IPv6-only bundle, which has no public IPv4 either.
If you find a size where this arithmetic does not hold, or a competitor price that has moved since we last checked, please tell us — the numbers above are generated, so correcting the source corrects every page that quotes it.
6. Reproducing this yourself
You do not have to take the table on trust. The live rates are served from the public API and need no authentication:
curl https://krova.cloud/api/v1/pricingApply the formula in section 2 to any specification and you will get the same figure the pricing page quotes and the same figure you are billed. The competitor prices are the vendors' own published list prices on the dates given above.