> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.rafftechnologies.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Plans & sizing

> Two plan tiers (General Purpose / shared CPU and CPU Optimized / dedicated CPU), how to pick between them, and which size to start with for common workloads — web apps, databases, workers, dev/staging, Windows desktop, game servers

<sub>Updated May 8, 2026</sub>

A **plan** is a fixed bundle of CPU, RAM, and base disk, billed at a single rate. Outbound bandwidth is **unlimited** on every plan. Picking the right plan is the main sizing decision when creating a VM. The full price list lives on [Pricing](/products/build/virtual-machines/details/pricing); this page is the **how-to-pick** guide.

## The two tiers

| Tier                           | CPU model          | When it's the right pick                                                                                                     |
| ------------------------------ | ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Standard — General Purpose** | **Shared** vCPU    | Most workloads. Cheapest per-vCPU rate. Short performance dips during host-level contention are acceptable                   |
| **Premium — CPU Optimized**    | **Dedicated** vCPU | Workloads where consistent CPU performance matters every millisecond — databases, real-time services, latency-sensitive APIs |

In simple terms:

* **Standard** — the platform may share the underlying physical core with other VMs. Performance is great most of the time but can have brief jitter when neighbors get busy. Best price/CPU.
* **Premium** — your vCPU is yours alone on the physical core. Performance is predictable and steady. Higher price/CPU but no noisy-neighbor dips.

If you can't tell which fits, **start with Standard**. Move workloads to Premium when you can point to a specific symptom (latency p99 spikes, database query timeouts under load, real-time-stream stutter) that a dedicated CPU would solve.

## Recommended starting plans by workload

Each row below names a **starting** plan — the place to begin, then resize up if you outgrow it. All prices are monthly subscription rates; see [Pricing](/products/build/virtual-machines/details/pricing) for yearly / 24-month locks.

### Web and application servers

| Workload                                                   | Starting plan                                     | Cost             |
| ---------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | ---------------- |
| **Personal blog, hobby project, low-traffic landing page** | Premium 1 vCPU / 1 GiB / 25 GiB                   | \$3.99/mo        |
| **Static-site host with Caddy / nginx**                    | Premium 1 vCPU / 1 GiB or Standard 2 vCPU / 4 GiB | \$3.99–\$4.99/mo |
| **Small dev / staging server**                             | Standard 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 50 GiB                  | \$4.99/mo        |
| **Production web app, low–medium traffic**                 | Standard 4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 120 GiB                 | \$9.99/mo        |
| **Production API, medium traffic**                         | Standard 8 vCPU / 16 GiB / 240 GiB                | \$23.99/mo       |
| **Latency-sensitive production API**                       | Premium 4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 120 GiB                  | \$35.99/mo       |
| **High-traffic API or event-driven service**               | Premium 8 vCPU / 16 GiB / 180 GiB                 | \$63.99/mo       |

### Databases

Databases are CPU-and-disk-sensitive — almost always pick Premium for consistent I/O.

| Workload                                                            | Starting plan                      | Cost         |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- | ------------ |
| **Small Postgres / MySQL / MongoDB** (single tenant, \<100 GB data) | Premium 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 80 GiB    | \$19.99/mo   |
| **Medium production database**                                      | Premium 4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 120 GiB   | \$35.99/mo   |
| **Heavy production database** (many connections, OLTP)              | Premium 8 vCPU / 32 GiB / 240 GiB  | \$127.99/mo  |
| **Large analytical / OLAP workload**                                | Premium 16 vCPU / 64 GiB or higher | \$255.99+/mo |

For databases above \~80 GB, attach a [Volume](/products/store/volumes) for the data directory so disk size and VM size scale independently.

### Background workers, batch, ML

| Workload                                               | Starting plan            | Cost        |
| ------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------ | ----------- |
| **Lightweight cron / scheduled jobs**                  | Standard 2 vCPU / 4 GiB  | \$4.99/mo   |
| **Background queue workers** (Sidekiq, Celery, BullMQ) | Standard 4 vCPU / 8 GiB  | \$9.99/mo   |
| **Parallel batch jobs** (data processing, scrapers)    | Standard 8 vCPU / 16 GiB | \$23.99/mo  |
| **CPU-bound batch** (encoding, image processing)       | Premium 8 vCPU / 16 GiB  | \$63.99/mo  |
| **CPU-only ML inference** (small models)               | Premium 8 vCPU / 32 GiB  | \$127.99/mo |

### CI/CD runners

| Workload                                  | Starting plan             | Cost       |
| ----------------------------------------- | ------------------------- | ---------- |
| **Small repo, sequential builds**         | Standard 4 vCPU / 8 GiB   | \$9.99/mo  |
| **Multiple parallel builds**              | Standard 8 vCPU / 16 GiB  | \$23.99/mo |
| **Heavy build (Docker images, monorepo)** | Standard 12 vCPU / 32 GiB | \$43.99/mo |

### Bastion / jump host

| Workload                                 | Starting plan                   | Cost      |
| ---------------------------------------- | ------------------------------- | --------- |
| **Bastion host** (SSH gateway, low-load) | Premium 1 vCPU / 1 GiB / 25 GiB | \$3.99/mo |

### Windows workloads

Premium is generally the right pick for Windows — UI responsiveness benefits from dedicated CPU, and Windows has a higher RAM floor than Linux.

| Workload                                                       | Starting plan                    | Cost        |
| -------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------- | ----------- |
| **Windows admin / RDP terminal** (single user)                 | Premium 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 80 GiB  | \$19.99/mo  |
| **Multi-user RDP terminal server**                             | Premium 4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 120 GiB | \$35.99/mo  |
| **Windows app server** (.NET, IIS, SQL Server with light load) | Premium 4 vCPU / 8 GiB           | \$35.99/mo  |
| **Windows production database** (SQL Server, heavy)            | Premium 8 vCPU / 32 GiB          | \$127.99/mo |

### Game servers

Latency-sensitive — Premium is the right pick for any production game server.

| Workload                                                        | Starting plan           | Cost       |
| --------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------- | ---------- |
| **Small game server** (Minecraft, Counter-Strike, \<30 players) | Premium 2 vCPU / 4 GiB  | \$19.99/mo |
| **Medium game server** (50–100 players)                         | Premium 4 vCPU / 8 GiB  | \$35.99/mo |
| **Large game server / multi-instance**                          | Premium 8 vCPU / 16 GiB | \$63.99/mo |

## How to size in practice

Three rules that beat any sizing chart:

1. **Start one size below what you think you need.** Resize up is fast (one reboot, prorated billing). Right-size at month-end with real metrics.
2. **Watch RAM, not CPU.** Most "I need a bigger VM" moments are RAM-bound — the OS starts swapping and everything slows down. CPU saturation is rarer than memory pressure for typical web/app workloads.
3. **Move data off the VM.** If the disk is filling up, attach a [Volume](/products/store/volumes); if backups are the issue, [Object Storage](/products/store/object-storage) is cheaper per GB than VM disk. Don't size up the VM to gain disk.

You can change plans on a running VM — see [Resize](/products/build/virtual-machines/quickstart-guides/resize). Disk can grow but cannot shrink, so be conservative there.

## Plan vs storage vs network — what's billed where

|                                   | Cost                                                                                          |
| --------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Plan** (vCPU + RAM + base disk) | Subscription rate or hourly (see [Pricing](/products/build/virtual-machines/details/pricing)) |
| **Outbound bandwidth**            | **Free, unlimited, never metered**                                                            |
| **Extra block storage**           | [Volumes](/products/store/volumes) — \$0.05/GiB/mo                                            |
| **Snapshots**                     | Per-GB-month                                                                                  |
| **Backups**                       | Per-GB-month above the shared free pool                                                       |
| **Public IPs**                    | Free if auto-assigned and attached; \$3/mo (IPv4) or \$1/mo (IPv6) for reserved               |

## Related

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card title="Pricing" icon="circle-info" href="/products/build/virtual-machines/details/pricing">
    Per-plan rates and lock-in discount table.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Resize" icon="up-right-and-down-left-from-center" href="/products/build/virtual-machines/quickstart-guides/resize">
    Change plan on a running VM.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Storage model" icon="hard-drive" href="/products/build/virtual-machines/concepts/storage-model">
    Where to put data — base disk, volumes, snapshots, backups, Object Storage.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>