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Cloud · head to head

Contabo vs Envoy

Contabo logo

Contabo

Cloud

Affordable high-performance VPS hosting

From
€4.5/month
Free plan
No
Visit ContaboFull review
Envoy logo

Envoy

Developer Tools

A high-performance L7 proxy written in C++ that is configured by an API rather than a config file, and is usually deployed under a control plane.

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit EnvoyFull review

The short version

  • Envoy is free; Contabo starts at €4.5/mo.
  • Only Contabo lists VPS Hosting; only Envoy lists xDS dynamic configuration.
  • Where Contabo falls short: fully unmanaged infrastructure requires all setup and maintenance by customer.
  • Prices and features on this page were last checked on 13 November 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Contabo and Envoy actually diverge.

Attributes where Contabo and Envoy differ
AttributeContaboEnvoy
Starting price€4.5/monthFree
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsLinux, WindowsWeb
CategoryCloudDeveloper Tools

Not yet recorded: pricing model for Contabo, founded for Envoy.

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Contabo

  • VPS Hosting
  • Dedicated Servers
  • Object Storage
  • Snapshots
  • DDoS Protection
  • Custom ISO
  • Multiple Locations
  • SSD Storage

Only in Envoy

  • xDS dynamic configuration
  • Protocol breadth
  • Filter chain architecture
  • Observability by default
  • Outlier detection
  • Traffic shaping
  • mTLS termination and origination
  • Hot restart

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Contabo

  • Web hostingnot Envoy
  • Game serversnot Envoy
  • Development environmentsnot Envoy
  • VPN serversnot Envoy

Envoy

  • Acting as the data plane under a service mesh or Gateway API implementation, which is how the overwhelming majority of deployments use itnot Contabo
  • An edge or API gateway that needs per-route retry budgets, circuit breaking and outlier detection rather than round-robin proxyingnot Contabo
  • Migrating traffic between service versions or between a monolith and its replacement, using weighted splits and shadow trafficnot Contabo
  • Standardising observability across a polyglot estate, so that latency, error rates and tracing look the same regardless of the language a service is written innot Contabo

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Contabo

  • Fully unmanaged infrastructure requires all setup and maintenance by customer
  • No formal SLA with financial compensation for downtime violations

Envoy

  • The configuration surface is very large and hand-written bootstrap YAML runs to hundreds of lines for routing that Nginx expresses in twenty, which is why nearly every production deployment sits under a control plane and inherits that control plane's constraints as well
  • xDS is the real API and it is not stable in the comfortable sense; the v2 API set was removed outright, resource types continue to be deprecated, and your control plane and Envoy binaries have to be upgraded roughly in step or the proxies stop accepting configuration
  • Extending it properly means writing a C++ filter and building and maintaining your own Envoy binary; the alternatives are Lua, which adds per-request overhead, and proxy-wasm, whose ABI has remained effectively experimental for years with a real performance cost
  • At sidecar density the per-proxy memory and CPU footprint is a measurable share of cluster capacity, since thousands of workloads each carry a full proxy, and this is precisely the cost that has pushed mesh projects towards node-level or ambient architectures
  • There is no single vendor selling support for Envoy itself; you get the community plus control-plane vendors such as Solo.io and Tetrate, so an Envoy-level production bug is your own engineers in a C++ codebase unless a support contract happens to cover it
  • Diagnosing why a request got a particular response involves reading config dumps, the stats endpoint and the RESPONSE_FLAGS codes in access logs rather than a readable error, which is a specific skill you must hire or spend months growing

Pricing, plan by plan

Contabo

€4.5/month
  • Cloud VPS€4.5/mo
    • 4 vCPU
    • 8 GB RAM
    • 100 GB SSD
  • Cloud VDS€39/mo
    • Dedicated cores
    • 24 GB RAM
    • 180 GB NVMe
  • Dedicated Server€149/mo
    • AMD CPU
    • 64 GB RAM
    • 1 TB NVMe

Envoy

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Envoy review.

Which should you pick?

Choose Contabo if

  • You need vps hosting.
  • You work on Linux, Windows.
  • You also want dedicated servers.
Contabo review

Choose Envoy if

  • You need xds dynamic configuration.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want protocol breadth.
Envoy review

Questions people ask

Is Contabo or Envoy better?
Neither clearly leads. Contabo starts at €4.5/month and Envoy at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Contabo or Envoy?
Envoy has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at €4.5/month for Contabo and Free for Envoy.
Does Contabo or Envoy run on more platforms?
Contabo runs on Linux, Windows. Envoy runs on Web.
Can I use Envoy for free?
Yes. Envoy has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Contabo starts at €4.5/month.
What is Contabo best used for?
Contabo is most often used for web hosting, game servers, development environments, vpn servers. Of those, web hosting and game servers are not what Envoy is typically brought in for.
What can Contabo do that Envoy cannot?
Contabo covers VPS Hosting, Dedicated Servers, Object Storage, Snapshots. Envoy covers xDS dynamic configuration, Protocol breadth, Filter chain architecture, Observability by default.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Contabo: What is the base pricing for Contabo VPS?

Contabo Cloud VPS starts at EUR 4.50 per month (approximately $4.95 USD) with 4 vCPU cores and 8 GB RAM. Prices scale up to EUR 39+ per month for dedicated performance VPS with higher specs.

Source
Envoy: Should I run Envoy on its own, or under a control plane?

Almost always under one. Directly authoring xDS or static bootstrap configuration is viable for a handful of routes and becomes unmanageable beyond that. Envoy Gateway, Istio, Contour, Gloo and Consul all exist to generate that configuration for you.

Contabo: Does Contabo raise prices at renewal?

No. Unlike many hosting providers, Contabo does not increase renewal prices. The promotional price you get at sign-up is locked in for future renewals.

Source
Envoy: How does it compare with Nginx or HAProxy?

Envoy is dynamically configured over an API and instrumented far more heavily; Nginx and HAProxy are faster to configure and lighter for straightforward reverse proxying. If you never need to change routing without a reload, Envoy is more machinery than the problem requires.

Contabo: What data center locations does Contabo offer?

Contabo operates 9 global data center regions including multiple EU locations, US East/Central/West Coast, United Kingdom, India, Singapore, Japan, and Australia.

Source
Envoy: What does it cost?

Nothing to licence; it is Apache 2.0 and there is no paid edition. The cost is engineering time and, for most organisations, a commercial control plane or cloud service that packages it.

Contabo: Does Contabo provide managed services?

No. Contabo VPS is fully unmanaged. You handle all setup, security patching, and system maintenance. Managed hosting adds 2 hours per month of dedicated support for a fee.

Source
Envoy: Can I write extensions without C++?

You can write Lua filters or proxy-wasm modules in Rust, Go, C++ or AssemblyScript. Both carry per-request overhead compared with a native filter, and the Wasm path has been slower to stabilise than the project originally projected.

Contabo: What is Contabo's uptime guarantee?

Contabo maintains a 99.996% uptime guarantee across all plans. The platform includes unlimited traffic and free DDoS protection.

Source
Envoy: Is it a CNCF project?

Yes, it is a graduated CNCF project licensed under Apache 2.0, which means the trademark and governance sit with the foundation rather than with Lyft or any vendor.

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