AWS Lightsail vs Contabo

AWS Lightsail is strongest for AWS ecosystem users. Contabo is strongest for budget-conscious developers. Here's how they stack up on price, uptime, and support.

Feature	AWS Lightsail	Contabo
Starting price	$0.8/mo	$3.23/mo
Best for	AWS ecosystem users Predictable bundled pricing Windows workloads	Budget-conscious developers Personal projects Storage-heavy workloads Self-hosters
Stated uptime SLA	99.9%	99.90%
Storage	SSD	NVME
Regions	16	4
Managed Kubernetes	No	No
Support channels	AWS Support plans (separate from Lightsail), Community forums, Docs	Ticket, Docs, Community forum
Compliance	SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA eligible	GDPR
Hidden costs to watch for	Data transfer overage varies significantly by AWS region ($0.09-$0.132/GB) Windows bundles cost 70-90% more than equivalent Linux bundles	Quoted monthly prices are the effective rate for a 24-month prepaid/contract term; shorter terms (1 or 12 months) cost more per month Additional IPv4 addresses, extra backup slots, and storage extensions are billed as add-ons Outgoing traffic is technically unlimited but subject to a fair usage policy that can throttle abusive/sustained high-bandwidth usage Support is ticket-only on lower tiers; phone support requires add-on
Last reviewed	2026-07-17	2026-07-18