VPS comparisons

arm64 vs x86 for a small service

Scaleway's arm64 BASIC2 plan compared with x86 plans from Contabo and UpCloud on price, architecture risk and what must be tested.

Recorded data: 2026-10-25 · Comparison question: When is an arm64 VPS the better small-plan choice, and what breaks if you guess?

Current recorded data

Rows are generated from the verified catalog snapshot at build time. Unknown means the provider did not publish the field; it is not zero.

Plan	Listed monthly price	Renewal monthly price	Planning figure	Setup fee	vCPU	RAM	Storage	Traffic	IPv6	Backups	regions	Verified
Scaleway Scaleway BASIC2-A2C-4GScaleway	16.79 EUR ($18.79)	16.79 EUR ($18.79)	$18.79	$0.00	2	4096 MB	unknown	unknown	unknown	unknown	2	2026-10-25
Contabo Cloud VPS 4Contabo	4.40 EUR ($4.92)	5.50 EUR ($6.16)	$6.16	$0.00	4	8192 MB	100 GB ssd	unknown	yes	yes ($1.85/mo)	2	2026-10-24
UpCloud Starter 2gb / 2coreUpCloud	8.00 EUR ($8.95)	8.00 EUR ($8.95)	$8.95	$0.00	2	2048 MB	30 GB ssd	unknown	yes	unknown	9	2026-10-24

Scope: Recorded plans on 2026-10-24/25, compared on published architecture, price, storage and documented limitations.

Architecture is a compatibility decision first

Scaleway's BASIC2 plan is arm64; the Contabo and UpCloud plans are x86-64. Software that ships only x86 binaries, proprietary agents or images without arm64 variants will not run on arm64 without rebuilding.

The decision is therefore not price per vCPU until you have confirmed that your stack builds and runs on arm64 and that your monitoring, backup and rescue tooling support it.

Price and resource shape

The recorded arm64 plan provides two vCPUs and 4 GB RAM without bundled local storage; storage is a separate block volume. The x86 plans bundle local disks and larger transfer allowances in the captured data.

Once the block-volume cost is added, the arm64 price advantage narrows. The table shows storage as unknown for Scaleway rather than treating it as zero.

Platform and policy differences

Contabo's price depends on a 24-month term and fair-use traffic. UpCloud publishes a global price list with a data-center count and a fair-transfer policy. Scaleway's plan is monthly and includes IPv4/IPv6 dual stack in the captured instance data.

These are policy differences, not performance differences; none of the three has an independent benchmark in this dataset.

A practical test plan

Build the application and container images for arm64 locally, run the test suite, then deploy to a short-term arm64 instance and measure startup, memory use and any native dependencies. Keep the x86 plan as the fallback until the arm64 deployment has served production traffic.

If any step requires an x86-only tool, stop and choose x86; the money saved is smaller than a blocked deployment.

Limits of this comparison

No measured CPU performance is available for any plan.
Scaleway block-storage pricing is not included in the recorded plan price.
Container image support for arm64 must be verified per application.

Facts come from provider-published sources recorded in the catalog. Independent performance, support and reliability measurements are not available, so this comparison does not rank those dimensions.

Sources behind the table

Scaleway API - instance products (fr-par-1)Scaleway · Provider official · Observed Oct 25, 2026Public API listing 50 server SKUs with ncpus/ram/monthly_price/network bandwidth. BASIC2 (Ampere ARM) is the current entry-value line; legacy Value/Value Performance SKUs no longer listed. Fetched 2026-10-25.https://api.scaleway.com/instance/v1/zones/fr-par-1/products/servers
Scaleway API - instance products (nl-ams-1)Scaleway · Provider official · Observed Oct 25, 2026Confirms the BASIC2 SKUs are also listed in Amsterdam. Fetched 2026-10-25.https://api.scaleway.com/instance/v1/zones/nl-ams-1/products/servers
Auto Backup for Cloud VPSContabo · Provider official · Observed Oct 24, 2026States Auto Backup is a paid add-on with 10-day incremental backups.https://contabo.com/en/auto-backup/
Cloud VPS 4 configuratorContabo · Provider official · Observed Oct 24, 2026Term pricing (1/3/6/12/24 months), No Setup Fee, Auto Backup EUR 1.65/month, region selector; observed 2026-10-24 UTC.https://contabo.com/en/vps/cloud-vps-core-4
Cloud VPS plansContabo · Provider official · Observed Oct 24, 2026Plan cards with vCPU, RAM, SSD, snapshots, port speed, unlimited traffic and 24-month prices; observed 2026-10-24 UTC.https://contabo.com/en/vps/
Data Centers WorldwideContabo · Provider official · Observed Oct 24, 2026Lists 9 regions/11 locations including 5 data centers in Germany and US Central (St. Louis).https://contabo.com/en/locations/
ECB euro foreign exchange reference rates — USDEuropean Central Bank · Third party · Observed Oct 23, 2026EUR/USD reference rate 1.1193 on 2026-10-23, used only to normalize EUR-denominated offers into USD for filtering and budget comparisons. Converted values are rounded to the nearest cent.https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/euro_reference_exchange_rates/html/index.en.html
UpCloud data centersUpCloud Ltd · Provider official · Observed Oct 24, 2026Official data-center list used for Helsinki, London, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, San Jose, New York, Singapore and Sydney location mappings.https://upcloud.com/data-centers/
UpCloud pricing — Starter cloud serversUpCloud Ltd · Provider official · Observed Oct 24, 2026Official Starter plan table: memory, CPU cores, bandwidth, standard SSD storage and EUR monthly price. States prices exclude local taxes, IPv4 is included, public IPv6 is free, and Starter plans include zero-cost egress under the Fair Transfer Policy.https://upcloud.com/pricing/

Table values come from these recorded provider sources; the editorial analysis above adds no facts beyond them. Unknown means the field was not published.