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Cloud · head to head

Contabo vs Longhorn

Contabo logo

Contabo

Cloud

Affordable high-performance VPS hosting

From
€4.5/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Longhorn logo

Longhorn

Cloud

Open source distributed block storage for Kubernetes, incubating at the CNCF

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Longhorn has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Contabo fully unmanaged infrastructure requires all setup and maintenance by customer; Longhorn there is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.
  • They diverge on capability: Contabo covers VPS Hosting, Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Contabo and Longhorn actually diverge.

Attributes where Contabo and Longhorn differ
AttributeContaboLonghorn
Starting price€4.5/monthFree
Pricing modelUnknownOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsLinux, WindowsLinux, Kubernetes
Founded2003Unknown

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Cloud).

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 Longhorn

  • Per-volume controllers
  • Synchronous replication
  • Snapshots and backups
  • Volume expansion
  • Disaster recovery volumes
  • Web interface

What people use each for

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

Contabo

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

Longhorn

  • An on-premises Kubernetes cluster with local disks and no SAN that needs replicated persistent volumesnot Contabo
  • Edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole clusternot Contabo
  • A K3s deployment where the storage layer must be light enough to run alongside the workloadsnot Contabo
  • A team that wants snapshots and S3 backups of persistent volumes without paying per-node storage licencesnot 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

Longhorn

  • There is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.
  • Synchronous replication across nodes means write latency depends on the slowest replica and the network between nodes, which makes it a poor fit for latency-sensitive databases.
  • Every replica is a full copy, so three-way replication consumes three times the raw capacity, unlike erasure-coded systems that are far more space efficient.
  • It is designed for block storage on modest clusters and does not scale to the node counts or throughput that Ceph or a commercial array handles, so growth eventually forces a migration.
  • Recovery from certain degraded states, such as a volume stuck detaching or replicas failing to rebuild, requires manual intervention and knowledge of Longhorn internals that is not widely held.

Pricing, plan by plan

Contabo

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

Longhorn

Free
  • LonghornFree
    • Apache 2.0 licensed, no licence fee
    • Community support via GitHub and Slack only
    • No vendor SLA or escalation path

Which should you pick?

Choose Contabo if

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

Choose Longhorn if

  • You need per-volume controllers.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Kubernetes.
  • You also want synchronous replication.
Longhorn review

Questions people ask

Is Contabo or Longhorn better?
Neither clearly leads. Contabo starts at €4.5/month and Longhorn at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Contabo or Longhorn?
Longhorn has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at €4.5/month for Contabo and Free for Longhorn.
Does Contabo or Longhorn run on more platforms?
Contabo runs on Linux, Windows. Longhorn runs on Linux, Kubernetes.
Can I use Longhorn for free?
Yes. Longhorn 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 Longhorn is typically brought in for.
What can Contabo do that Longhorn cannot?
Contabo covers VPS Hosting, Dedicated Servers, Object Storage, Snapshots. Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers, Synchronous replication, Snapshots and backups, Volume expansion.

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
Longhorn: Who do we call when it breaks?

Nobody, unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime, which includes commercial support for Longhorn. This is the decisive question for production use.

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
Longhorn: How much capacity does replication cost?

Full copies, so three replicas means three times the raw capacity. Budget accordingly rather than assuming erasure coding efficiency.

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
Longhorn: Is it suitable for production databases?

For modest workloads yes, but synchronous replication adds write latency and high-transaction databases usually want something faster.

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
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
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