A snapshot is a storage line item, not a feature. The three providers publish it three different ways: DigitalOcean at $0.06 per GiB per month with a $0.01 minimum, Hetzner at €0.0143 per GB per month excluding VAT and billed only on the compressed size, and OVHcloud as a flat “from $0.40 per month” with no per-GB rate published at all.
A snapshot is one line of the bill — what the monthly bill looks like with snapshots prices the other five.
Every VPS price page in this niche lists snapshots as a bullet point. Almost none of them put a number next to it, and the number is the only part that shows up on an invoice. This page collects the three published rates we could read on 2026-10-31, states the unit each one is billed in, and does the arithmetic that turns a rate into a monthly line item. Where a provider's page does not answer a question — whether a deleted server stops the snapshot charge at DigitalOcean, for instance — this article says so rather than filling the gap.
| Provider | Published rate | Billed against | Minimum | Prorated? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean — Droplet snapshot | $0.06 per GiB / month | The size of the snapshot | $0.01 | Not stated; the page only mentions a minimum for short-lived snapshots |
| DigitalOcean — volume snapshot | $0.06 per GiB / month | The size of the snapshot | $0.01 | Not stated |
| Hetzner — Cloud snapshot | €0.0143 per GB / month, excl. VAT | The compressed size in Hetzner's storage | Not stated | Yes, by fraction of a month |
| OVHcloud — VPS manual backup | from $0.40 per month | Not published per GB | Not stated | Not stated |
| OVHcloud — VPS automatic backup, 7 rolling days | from $1.40 per month | Not published per GB | Not stated | Not stated |
| OVHcloud — VPS standard backup, 24 hours | included | Daily copy held for 24 hours | — | — |
Sources, all fetched on 2026-10-31: docs.digitalocean.com/products/images/snapshots/details/pricing/, which is marked “Last verified 26 Oct 2026” by DigitalOcean and states “Snapshots are charged at $0.06 per GB per month for Droplets and $0.06 per GiB per month for volumes” plus “a minimum charge of $0.01”; hetzner.com/cloud/cost-optimized/, whose add-ons block lists “Snapshots — per GB per month € 0.0143, excl. VAT”; us.ovhcloud.com/vps/options/, which lists “Standard Automatic Backup — Included”, “Automatic backup — Starting at $1.40/month” and “Manual Backup — Starting at $0.40/month”. The two DigitalOcean figures are quoted exactly as that page writes them, including its own mix of “GB” for Droplets and “GiB” for volumes.
The row that matters most is the third column. DigitalOcean's page says pricing is “based on the size of the snapshot” and does not mention compression, so the rate applies to whatever size the snapshot reports. Hetzner's FAQ says the opposite in plain words: “We will only bill you for the space the compressed Snapshot uses in our storage system. So if you create a Snapshot of a disk of 40GB, we will bill you for 40GB or less — depending on how the data on your disk compresses.” A disk full of text compresses; a disk full of already-compressed video does not. Two providers, two rates that look comparable per gigabyte, two different quantities on the meter.
DigitalOcean is the only one of the three that publishes both a per-GiB snapshot rate and the disk size of every plan, which makes the whole calculation checkable. Multiply the plan's disk by $0.06:
| Basic plan | Droplet / month | Disk | Snapshot of the full disk | Weekly backup adds | Daily backup adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 512 MiB / 1 vCPU | $4.00 | 10 GiB | $0.60 | $0.80 | $1.20 |
| 1 GiB / 1 vCPU | $6.00 | 25 GiB | $1.50 | $1.20 | $1.80 |
| 2 GiB / 1 vCPU | $12.00 | 50 GiB | $3.00 | $2.40 | $3.60 |
| 2 GiB / 2 vCPU | $18.00 | 60 GiB | $3.60 | $3.60 | $5.40 |
| 4 GiB / 2 vCPU | $24.00 | 80 GiB | $4.80 | $4.80 | $7.20 |
| 8 GiB / 4 vCPU | $48.00 | 160 GiB | $9.60 | $9.60 | $14.40 |
| 16 GiB / 8 vCPU | $96.00 | 320 GiB | $19.20 | $19.20 | $28.80 |
Droplet prices and disk sizes from digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets (read 2026-10-31, Basic tab, Regular CPU). Snapshot column is disk in GiB × $0.06, the rate on docs.digitalocean.com/products/images/snapshots/details/pricing/. Backup columns are the Droplet's monthly price × 20% (weekly) and × 30% (daily), the percentages on docs.digitalocean.com/products/backups/details/pricing/, which frames them as “Added Cost” on top of the Droplet. All arithmetic is ours; every input is the provider's.
Read the fourth column down and it looks like a ladder: $0.60, $1.50, $3.00, $3.60, $4.80, $9.60, $19.20. Read the second column down and the ladder has a different shape: $4.00, $6.00, $12.00, $18.00, $24.00, $48.00, $96.00. The two columns do not move in step, because a snapshot is priced on disk while the Droplet is priced on RAM and cores. The $4.00 plan includes 10 GiB and the $6.00 plan includes 25 GiB; from $18.00 upward the disk grows with the price — 60 GiB at $18.00, 80 GiB at $24.00, 160 GiB at $48.00, 320 GiB at $96.00. So the snapshot line grows with the disk, not with the RAM: the $24.00 plan carries an 80 GiB disk and $4.80 of snapshot, while the $12.00 plan carries 50 GiB and $3.00.
This is the part that is genuinely surprising, and it falls straight out of the two published rate structures. DigitalOcean sells backups two ways: as a percentage of the Droplet's monthly cost (20% weekly, 30% daily) or as a usage-based per-GiB rate. The 20% is not phrased as a sentence on that page — it is a row in the Basic Plans table, under the lead-in “Basic plans add the following costs to your Droplet:”, and the row reads “Weekly — 20.0% of the Droplet’s cost per month”, with the daily row reading “30.0% of the Droplet’s cost per month”. The prose above the table says: “Basic plans add a flat percentage of the Droplet’s cost to the monthly bill, while usage-based plans add a flat rate per GiB of a backup’s restorable file size.” Source: docs.digitalocean.com/products/backups/details/pricing/, page marked last_updated: 2026-03-09, read on 2026-10-31. The percentage form scales with the price of the Droplet; the snapshot rate scales with the size of the disk. On the four plans from $18.00 upward those two scales produce identical dollar amounts:
That coincidence is arithmetic, not a promotion. It holds on the four rows where the disk and the price move together — 60 GiB at $18.00, 80 GiB at $24.00, 160 GiB at $48.00, 320 GiB at $96.00 — because on those rows 20% of the Droplet price and $0.06 on every gigabyte of its disk resolve to the same number. On the 25 GiB and 50 GiB plans the disk is larger relative to the price, so the snapshot comes out above the weekly backup ($1.50 against $1.20, $3.00 against $2.40). On the 10 GiB entry plan it comes out below ($0.60 against $0.80).
The practical consequence: on a mid-size Droplet, an on-demand snapshot you keep indefinitely costs the same per month as the weekly automated backup — but it is one image, at one point in time, with no schedule and no retention policy behind it. What you are buying with the snapshot is control over when it is taken and how long it lives; what you are buying with the backup is repetition. The prices do not distinguish between those two things, and the price list does not tell you which one your workload needs.
The same DigitalOcean backups page lists a second, non-percentage structure for plans that use it: $0.04 per GiB per month for weekly, $0.03 for daily, $0.02 for every 12 hours, $0.015 for every 6 hours and $0.01 for every 4 hours. Set the daily figure beside the snapshot rate and the ordering is plain: $0.06 per GiB-month for a snapshot you take by hand, $0.03 per GiB-month for a backup taken daily and kept on a schedule. Both are per-GiB meters on the same account, and the manual one is priced higher. The page does not explain why, and this article will not invent a reason.
Hetzner's add-on block states the rate plainly: snapshots are €0.0143 per GB per month, excluding VAT. Its billing FAQ then explains what the GB is: not the disk, but “the space the compressed Snapshot uses in our storage system”. The example it gives is a 40 GB disk billed at “40GB or less”. So €0.0143 is the maximum per gigabyte, and the real figure depends on how well your data compresses.
Put that against the same server's backup, which Hetzner prices completely differently: “a monthly flat price, which is 20% of the price of the server you activate them for”, and that flat price buys seven backup slots. Hetzner's own worked example uses a €3.29 server, where the backup is €3.29 × 0.2 = €0.658 per month. Run the same formula on the Cost-Optimized CX23 we read on 2026-10-31 — 2 vCPUs, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe, €5.99 per month excluding VAT — and the backup is €5.99 × 0.2 = €1.198 per month. That is exactly the figure the same page prints as the backup add-on's starting price, which is a useful cross-check: the “starting at €1.1980” on the marketing page is the 20% formula applied to the cheapest instance.
| Hetzner, CX23 (€5.99/mo, 40 GB disk) | What is billed | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Snapshot, if the whole 40 GB is billed | 40 GB × €0.0143 | €0.572 |
| Snapshot, if the data compresses | 40 GB or less × €0.0143 | €0.572 or less |
| Backup, weekly or daily | 20% of €5.99, seven slots | €1.198 |
Rate and formula from hetzner.com/cloud/cost-optimized/ (add-ons block) and docs.hetzner.com/cloud/billing/faq/ (“How do you bill for Snapshots and Backups?”), both read on 2026-10-31. The CX23 specification and price are from the same cost-optimized page. The €0.572 row is our multiplication of Hetzner's own rate by Hetzner's own disk size; the €1.198 row is Hetzner's own 20% rule applied to the same server, and it matches the “starting at €1.1980” the page prints.
One asymmetry is worth naming, because it changes how you should read the two numbers. A backup at Hetzner is priced off the server, so it rises when you upgrade the server and stays flat when your data grows. A snapshot is priced off the data, so it rises when your disk fills and stays flat when you upgrade the CPU. For a database that grows steadily, the flat 20% is the predictable line; for a machine that gets rebuilt and resized often, the per-GB meter is.
OVHcloud is the odd one out in two ways. First, it does not publish a per-GB rate at all: the VPS options page gives three tiers with “starting at” monthly prices — standard automatic backup included with a 24-hour window, automatic backup with 7 rolling days from $1.40 per month, and a manual backup from $0.40 per month. Without a per-GB figure there is no way to compute what a 40 GB snapshot costs on VPS-1; the page simply does not expose the arithmetic, and we are not going to estimate it.
Second, and more consequential, the page describes what happens after a restore: “Once restored, it is automatically deleted.” A snapshot at OVHcloud is single-use. You take it before an upgrade, you restore it if the upgrade goes wrong, and then it is gone — so the next upgrade needs a new one. That is a different product from DigitalOcean's snapshot, which sits in your account until you delete it, and from Hetzner's, which the FAQ says “remain permanently stored until they are actively deleted”. Same word on three price lists, three different lifetimes.
This is the question that decides whether a snapshot is a cheap way to park a machine or a bill you forget about. Hetzner answers it directly: snapshots “remain intact even after the original server has been deleted” and stay until deleted. That is the same page that recommends snapshotting and deleting a server as the cheaper alternative to leaving it switched off — advice that only makes sense if the snapshot keeps billing on its own meter after the server is gone.
DigitalOcean's snapshot pricing page does not address the question. It says pricing is based on the size of the snapshot, that the minimum charge is $0.01, and that there is “no additional charge for making a snapshot available in multiple regions”. Nothing about server deletion. We are not going to assert an answer on DigitalOcean's behalf; if this matters to your bill, the safe assumption is the conservative one, and the way to settle it is to delete a test Droplet with a snapshot attached and read the next invoice.
This connects to the wider question of what a powered-off server costs, which we covered separately: at all three providers a stopped server keeps billing, and the snapshot is not a way to avoid that charge — it is a way to replace the server entirely. The economics only work if the snapshot costs less per month than the idle server it replaces, which is exactly the comparison Hetzner's FAQ is making and exactly the comparison OVHcloud's single-use snapshot cannot support.
DigitalOcean charges $0.06 per GiB per month for a Droplet snapshot, with a minimum charge of $0.01. Hetzner charges €0.0143 per GB per month excluding VAT, and bills only the space the compressed snapshot occupies. OVHcloud does not publish a per-GB rate: its VPS options page lists a manual snapshot as starting at $0.40 per month and a seven-day automatic backup as starting at $1.40 per month, with the 24-hour standard backup included. All three figures were read from the providers' own pages on 2026-10-31.
It depends on the plan shape, and DigitalOcean publishes both rates on the same page so the comparison can be made directly. A snapshot costs $0.06 per GiB per month; the percentage-based backup adds 20 percent of the Droplet's monthly cost for weekly backups or 30 percent for daily ones. On the $24.00 Droplet with an 80 GiB disk, a full-disk snapshot is $4.80, the weekly backup adds $4.80 and the daily backup adds $7.20. On the $6.00 Droplet with 25 GiB, the snapshot is $1.50, the weekly backup adds $1.20 and the daily backup adds $1.80.
Hetzner states it explicitly: snapshots remain intact even after the original server has been deleted, and they stay stored until you actively delete them. DigitalOcean's snapshot pricing page does not address the question either way, so this article does not claim an answer for DigitalOcean. What that page does say is that pricing is based on the size of the snapshot and that there is no additional charge for making a snapshot available in multiple regions.
Hetzner says yes to prorating: if a snapshot exists for only a fraction of a month, it bills for that fraction. DigitalOcean does not state a proration rule. Its page says pricing is based on the size of the snapshot and that a minimum charge of $0.01 may apply for very small snapshots or snapshots that exist only for a short time, which describes a time-based floor without stating the proration formula. OVHcloud's options page gives a monthly starting price and does not describe short-lived snapshots.
A snapshot is priced per gigabyte per month, and the gigabyte means something different at each provider: the size of the image at DigitalOcean, the compressed size in storage at Hetzner, an unnamed quantity behind a “from” figure at OVHcloud. That single difference explains why the three rates cannot be ranked by reading them. What can be ranked is the effect on a real bill, and there DigitalOcean publishes enough to do the arithmetic: a full-disk snapshot adds $0.60 to $19.20 a month across the Basic range, and on the four plans from $18.00 upward that figure lands on exactly the same dollar amount as the weekly percentage backup. A snapshot is not a free feature you switch on. It is a second copy of the disk, billed by the gigabyte, that outlives the server that made it.