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Ask HN: Why is Linode way more expensive:D?

11 points by ahmedbaracat ↗ HN
I am comparing cloud providers (other than big tech ones AWS, Google, etc.) and I don't understand why is Linode is way expensive than the EU cloud providers.

I am benchmarking the closest dedicated server option to this • 2 CPU cores • 4GB RAM • 96 SSD • 4 TB transfer

Linode: $36, 2 cores, 4 GB RAM, 80 GB SSD, 4 TB transfer limit, 40/4 Gbps

Hetzner: 45 euro, 6 cores, 64 GB RAM, 1 TB ssd, 20TB, 1GBit

OVHCloud: £50, 6 cores, 32 RAM, 1TB SSD, unmetered, 1GBit

Scalaway: 40 euro, 4 cores, 32 GB RAM, 750GB SSD, unlimited, 300Mbps

Seems that EU cloud providers provide much better value for money, but I don't see why is it the case.

8 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 33.5 ms ] thread
adamcharnock
I only have partial information here - and that is that I’ve heard connectivity is generally much cheaper in the EU. And I can see why too: denser population, smaller distances between population centres, close to other continents.

But I’d be interested in any other reasons people can give.

maicro
I was going to add on here that I thought electricity prices might be cheaper as well - I swear I saw recently some EU country was basically fully powered by renewable energy for some period of time, so electricity costs basically went negative - but a quick search shows I'm completely wrong[0]...

[0] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=18851 - first .gov resource with relevant data directly on the page, that I found in ~30 seconds of searching. It is from 2014 though, so no guarantee how valid it still is...

adamcharnock
Additional thought: How competitive are the two markets? Does the USA have fewer second-tier cloud providers, and the market is just dominated by AWS/Google/Microsoft?

EU customers can naturally use those services, but there is a demand for local/EU-sovereign providers. Perhaps this demand provides enough fuel to maintain a robust & competitive ecosystem of smaller cloud providers?

maicro
Another guess - just comparing Linode and OVHCloud quickly, my guess is that Linode focuses more on multi-VPS systems, while OVHCloud has a larger fleet of dedicated servers. If you have limited rack space and an existing fleet of servers, my guess it would be easier to provide multi-VPS systems than dedicated; that's assuming and implying a _lot_ of history on how Linode has developed (and apparently been bought by Akamai back in 2022...), but could be one "practical" explanation for the different pricing for dedicated servers - VPS pricing between Linode and OVHCloud is much closer.
djaouen
Because when traffic spikes on your VPS, they don't black hole all the traffic like some other services lol
sshine
I suspect Linode's cost of operation is simply higher.

I did some CPU and disk benchmarking of VPS'es 10+ years ago and found that vCPU effective performance varies a lot.

But that does not account for the difference in cost for dedicated machines, like you investigate.