A low-cost VPS example for a continuous pre-recorded YouTube Live stream is about €5.99 per month before VAT for a cited Hetzner EU configuration, while AWS Lightsail listings start at $5 per month for a plan with 1 TB of transfer. These are provider-specific examples, not a universal monthly total, and the cheapest plan may not have enough transfer or CPU capacity for your stream.
Your bill depends on whether the VPS only sends an already encoded video or also encodes it, how much outbound traffic your bitrate creates, and charges for items such as tax, storage and backups. Estimate those separately before choosing a plan, then test your exact media and settings before relying on it overnight.
What the listed example prices include
A VPS price is the rental for a particular configuration in a particular region. It does not automatically represent the complete cost of running your channel. Read the plan details alongside the headline price: check whether it includes a public IP address, how much outbound transfer is allowed, and whether the displayed price excludes VAT or other tax.
For the examples below, the Hetzner figure combines a listed EU server price with a listed monthly IPv4 charge. AWS Lightsail’s examples are Linux/Unix bundles with public IPv4 and specified transfer allowances. Both providers can vary price or allowance by location, and a displayed bundle is not a certification that it will handle your chosen video encoder continuously.
Keep the distinction between rental and operating responsibility in view. A self-managed VPS means you arrange the stream process, restarts, monitoring and stream-key protection. If you would rather work through the choices involved in a managed service, the blog’s guide to 24/7 streaming services and Indian payment methods provides a separate comparison path; it is not part of the VPS prices here.
Hetzner EU example baseline
As listed in Hetzner’s price adjustment information effective 15 June 2026, its EU CX23 example is €5.49 per month excluding VAT and an IPv4 address. Hetzner’s documentation lists a Primary IPv4 address at €0.50 per month, so the illustrative combined figure is €5.99 per month before VAT. Confirm both the address charge and the server’s availability for your selected location at checkout.
The CX23 product details list 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM and 40 GB storage. Those specifications tell you what is provisioned, but do not establish how fast your particular media will encode on it. Hetzner’s EU plans list at least 20 TB of included traffic in the cited material; check the current plan and location page before treating that allowance as applying to the server you can actually order.
That allowance is comfortably above the illustrative traffic generated by a 4.5 Mbps stream over a 30-day month, but this does not make the server an automatic fit. The workload might involve real-time encoding, a different codec or multiple outputs, each of which changes resource requirements. The relevant question is not simply whether a plan has enough bandwidth: it is whether its CPU, memory and transfer terms suit your stream.
These Hetzner figures are dated examples, not a promise of a current checkout total. For a broader cost comparison that includes local computer electricity and cloud services, see 24/7 YouTube stream costs in India. That comparison is useful when the real choice is between maintaining a PC and renting a cloud machine, rather than between two VPS bundles.
Lightsail plan and transfer examples
As listed on AWS’s site in 2026, the Linux/Unix Lightsail plan with public IPv4 at $5 per month includes 0.5 GB RAM, 2 vCPUs, 20 GB SSD storage and 1 TB of transfer. The $7 per month example includes 1 GB RAM, 2 vCPUs, 40 GB SSD storage and 2 TB of transfer. These are listed examples, not universal worldwide totals: AWS notes that prices and transfer allowances depend on region, and some Asia-Pacific and South American regions have half the standard allowance.
The difference between the two bundles is not just two dollars. The higher listing has twice the memory, twice the storage and twice the stated transfer. For a continuously running stream, the transfer difference may be more consequential than the storage difference, depending on the bitrate and what else the VPS sends. AWS says excess outbound transfer may be charged, so confirm the applicable region’s current allowance and excess-transfer terms before estimating a full month.
Do not compare a dollar price in one region directly with a euro price in another as if they were equivalent bills. Exchange rates, tax treatment, location-specific allowances and the configuration included all differ. Treat each listing as a worked example, then build your own estimate from the region and plan actually available to you.
If you are choosing based on content type and workflow rather than just price, the article on streaming pre-recorded classes on YouTube can help you think through what the channel must do. It does not replace checking a provider’s technical limits, but it can clarify whether your project is a single prepared loop or a more involved publishing setup.
Estimate monthly traffic from bitrate
For a steady stream, outbound data depends on bitrate and on-air time. A useful estimate is:
bitrate in megabits per second × seconds streamed ÷ 8 = megabytes transferred
The division by eight converts bits to bytes. To express the result in decimal terabytes, divide megabytes by one million. For a 30-day month, continuous operation covers 2,592,000 seconds. At an illustrative 4.5 Mbps, the calculation is 4.5 × 2,592,000 ÷ 8, which is 1,458,000 megabytes, or about 1.46 TB using decimal units.
That is an estimate of the video stream’s outbound traffic, not a provider invoice forecast. Providers can count transfer differently, and protocol overhead or other traffic can affect the amount measured. A stream that runs fewer hours uses less traffic in proportion; a higher bitrate uses more. If the bitrate changes during the month, calculate each period separately and add the results.
Use the bitrate of the outgoing stream, not the size of the source video file, as the starting point for a continuous live broadcast. If the server transcodes the file, its outbound stream is still the traffic sent to YouTube. A source file may be large or small without changing the stream’s network use in the same way that output bitrate and runtime do.
The YouTube encoder settings guidance gives current recommendations to check for codec, bitrate and related live settings. Those settings affect both what YouTube expects and the data your VPS sends, so pick the intended resolution and frame rate first. Then use the actual output bitrate you plan to test rather than selecting an allowance by guesswork.
Compare allowance with continuous use
The table puts the example monthly traffic beside the cited transfer allowances. It does not include any other use of the VPS or make a claim about provider billing calculations.
| Listing example | Listed transfer allowance | Compared with about 1.46 TB/month at 4.5 Mbps |
|---|---|---|
| AWS Lightsail $5 plan | 1 TB | Below the illustrative stream estimate |
| AWS Lightsail $7 plan | 2 TB | Above the illustrative stream estimate, with less headroom than the Hetzner EU example |
| Hetzner EU plans in cited material | At least 20 TB | Well above the illustrative stream estimate, subject to plan and location confirmation |
The 1 TB Lightsail allowance is a poor match for this particular uninterrupted 4.5 Mbps example if the allowance is applied to the stream’s outbound traffic as expected. The 2 TB example is a closer listed match, though it leaves less room for other outbound use than a much larger allowance. In some AWS regions the standard allowance is reduced, so a nominal plan name alone is not enough to conclude that it fits.
For Hetzner, the cited EU allowance is much higher than this calculation. Still, do not make the leap from “enough transfer” to “reliable stream”: transfer, CPU capacity, memory and connection behaviour are separate constraints. Compare the allowance against your estimate for the region and product, and leave room for ordinary variation rather than aiming to use every included unit.
A 24/7 loop-stream bitrate guide is a useful next step if you have not settled on an output bitrate. Lowering bitrate can reduce traffic, but it should not be done blindly: the result also affects picture quality, and YouTube’s current recommendations should inform your encoder settings.
Add tax, overages, storage and extras
Make a small bill worksheet before ordering. Start with the base monthly rental, then add the public IP if charged separately, tax applicable to your account, and any storage or backup you choose to buy. Next, consider whether your estimated outbound stream exceeds the included transfer and whether the provider’s pricing page lists an excess-transfer charge for your region. Do not assume that a plan with ample transfer in one location has the same terms elsewhere.
The Hetzner example above is explicitly before VAT. The Lightsail figures are the listed monthly bundle amounts in the cited material; check the checkout or account billing treatment relevant to your country rather than silently treating tax as included. If you are budgeting in India, currency conversion and any applicable taxes or payment charges may also affect what appears on your statement; verify those with the provider and your payment method.
Storage can be easy to overlook. The listed plans provide a finite amount of SSD, and you may need room for the media file, operating system, logs and any replacement version you keep on the machine. A large archive may not belong on the VPS at all. Likewise, backups can protect configuration or uploaded media, but they are an added choice and should not be counted as free unless the provider says so for the exact plan.
If you want to send more than one stream or maintain additional processes, include that traffic and workload in the estimate. Also consider the time cost of administering a self-managed server: a low rental price does not include the person-hours needed to configure the encoder, keep credentials private, inspect failures and test a recovery. A managed option can shift some of that work, but compare its own current fee and limits separately rather than folding it into the VPS bill.
Check whether the instance can encode your media
There are two distinct jobs a VPS might do. It may encode a source file into a live output, which requires computing the video in real time, or it may send a stream that has already been prepared in an appropriate format. The second role can require less CPU, while software encoding can become demanding as resolution, frame rate, codec and encoder preset change. Plan specifications alone do not tell you which one your exact workload can sustain.
YouTube’s encoder setup help explains the encoder route and notes that first-time live activation may take up to 24 hours. Its settings guidance documents options including H.264, H.265/HEVC and AV1, up to 60 fps, constant bitrate and a recommended two-second keyframe interval. Check the current official guidance before preparing a stream, because settings and eligibility should not be inferred from the price of a VPS.
Before committing, test the same media file, resolution, frame rate, codec and encoder preset you intend to run. Watch CPU and memory use during the test and check that the stream can reconnect after a controlled interruption. A brief successful run is evidence about that configuration, not a guarantee of uninterrupted streaming through every failure or a full month of operation.
If you are encoding on a local computer instead, a VPS may not be necessary for the encoding work; you would be comparing different operating models. The blog’s guide to automatically restarting an OBS 24/7 stream covers a local-software concern that differs from VPS administration. Whichever route you choose, protect the stream key and keep a recovery procedure you have actually tested.
Decide what belongs in your monthly estimate
A useful estimate has three separate lines: the provider’s fixed monthly charges, the expected variable charges, and the operational work you are taking on. Fixed charges include the selected server and any separately billed address. Variable charges can include tax, excess transfer, added storage or backups. The operational line is not always a cash payment, but it is real: someone must monitor the stream, respond to a failure and maintain the configuration.
A self-managed VPS may make sense when you are comfortable with server administration, know whether you need encoding or relay, and have checked the relevant transfer allowance. If you do not want to maintain processes and recovery yourself, a managed service can remove a specific burden, though it introduces a separate service price and usage terms to compare. StreamNeo removes the need to keep your own computer running for an uploaded-video YouTube stream, which is useful when overnight machine maintenance is the part you want to avoid; it is a separate YouTube-only managed service, not part of the VPS examples.
Before choosing, verify the exact region, tax treatment, transfer definition and any add-on price on the provider’s own current page. Then test a representative stream and retain a backup plan. Neither a low price nor a large transfer allowance proves that the video will encode correctly or remain live without interruption.
Before committing, compare the operating options on the pricing page. When the file and channel are ready, start free — 24-hour trial, no card.
FAQ
Is €5.99 the monthly cost of any VPS for a 24/7 stream?
No. It is an illustrative Hetzner EU configuration based on a CX23 price and a separate IPv4 charge, before VAT, using the cited listing details. Your region, tax, address choice, extras and provider’s current availability can change the total.
Will a $5 Lightsail plan cover a continuous 4.5 Mbps stream?
The cited AWS listing gives that plan a 1 TB transfer allowance, while the transparent 30-day estimate at 4.5 Mbps is about 1.46 TB. That makes the allowance a poor match for this example; check the region’s actual allowance and billing terms, since AWS listings vary by location.
Can a small VPS encode my video continuously?
There is no answer from the plan name alone. Encoding load depends on the media and settings, including codec, resolution, frame rate and preset, so run a test with the exact configuration before relying on it.
Does renting a VPS ensure a YouTube stream stays live?
No. The VPS is one part of a streaming setup, and neither provider specifications nor an initial successful test guarantees uninterrupted operation. Check YouTube’s current encoder guidance, monitor the stream and test how you will recover if it drops.