Claude Code VPS and hosting compared: seven always-on machines and what they cost

An agent that answers your mail, runs a report at six in the morning or replies in Telegram needs a machine that is still switched on when the mail arrives. Several companies now sell one with Claude Code in mind. This is what each of them costs on the day we checked, 22 September 2026, and what you get for the money.

We sell one of them, the Mini, so read the table knowing that. Every figure in it comes from the vendor's own page, and the pages are linked at the end.

What counts as always-on

A machine that is not put to sleep, stopped or taken back when it is idle. An agent that waits for mail or for a schedule is idle most of the day, and a machine that sleeps when idle is asleep when the work turns up. That is the one test every offer below passes, and the offers further down are the ones that do not.

None of these prices includes Claude itself unless the row says so. On most of them, the Mini included, Claude Code signs in to your own Claude subscription or API account, and Anthropic bills you for it directly.

The offers, cheapest first

Offer	Price as published	EUR a month	Machine	Worth knowing
combobulating Mini	2.99 EUR a month	2.99	1 vCPU, 1 GB, 10 GB	Claude Code installed and updated for you. A container of its own on a shared host: no browser, no Docker, no public IPv4 of its own
Agent 37 Basic	3.99 USD a month	3.47	1 vCPU, 4 GB, 8 GB	Claude Code is one of the agents you can pick. Runs in a container. The built-in browser comes with the Pro plan
Agent 37 Cloud, awake around the clock	4.76 USD a month	4.14	2 vCPU, 4 GB, 4 GB	Billed per minute of uptime from a prepaid balance; this is their price for an instance that stays awake. A Claude Code template, root over SSH, no browser in that image
Virtua.Cloud Claude Code VPS, Power	5.00 EUR a month	5.00	1 vCPU, 1 GB, 20 GB SSD	Full root, billed by the hour with no commitment. You install Claude Code with their script or Anthropic's
Hostinger Claude Code VPS, KVM 1	6.49 USD a month	5.65	1 vCPU, 4 GB, 50 GB NVMe	Paid upfront for the plan term, then renews at 11.99 USD a month. Full root, Claude Code deployed with one click
VPSAI Spark	19 USD a month	16.54	2 GB burst memory, 20 GB	AI usage included. Chrome on a real display with logins that persist. No root
QuantVPS Claude Code VPS, Starter	29.99 USD a month	26.10	2 cores, 4 GB, 50 GB NVMe	Full administrator access, Windows or Linux. You install Claude Code

What we left out, and why

• Oracle Cloud Always Free. Free, and generous. But Oracle may reclaim an idle Always Free instance, meaning one whose CPU and network use stay under 20 percent for seven days (and memory too, on the Arm shapes). An agent waiting for its next mail looks exactly like that.
• The Agent 37 free plan. It sleeps after 15 minutes idle and wakes when you message it, and an agent left asleep for 30 days is removed.
• Agent 37 Cloud for part of the day. A stopped or sleeping instance pays for its disk alone, so it costs less than the row above only when it is not always on.
• Claude Code cloud sessions. They come with a Claude plan at no separate compute charge and are good for work on a repository. Anthropic's documentation says cloud sessions stop after a period of inactivity and the session's VM is reclaimed.
• Sealos Starter. 7 USD a month on a first paid plan, 34 USD after that. Its pricing page does not describe Starter as always-on or as a Claude Code machine; the plan it describes for always-on apps is Hobby.

A general-purpose VPS can cost less than anything above, especially on a yearly or introductory price, and you install Claude Code on it yourself. That is a different comparison. This one is of machines sold for running Claude Code.

Where the Mini sits, honestly

It is the cheapest always-on Claude Code machine in the table, and it is not the biggest. 1 GB of memory is a quarter of what Agent 37 Basic or Hostinger's KVM 1 gives you, for more money. We measured it before we sold it: three Claude Code sessions working at once, with pandas and LibreOffice beside them, peaked at 762 MB.

That is enough for agents that read mail, run on a schedule, work with files and APIs, and answer in Telegram. It is not enough for a headless browser, which is why a Mini has none. An agent that has to fill in forms on a website needs more memory and a browser: our Basic plan at 39 EUR a month has 4 GB and Chrome.

What comes with the Mini is on the price list: the terminal in your browser, a mailbox for the agent, the Telegram bridge, and a history of its projects on our git server. Claude itself stays on your own subscription.

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Prices as published on each vendor's own page on 22 September 2026: Agent 37 pricing, Agent 37 Cloud, Virtua.Cloud, Hostinger, VPSAI, QuantVPS, Sealos, Oracle Always Free resources and Claude Code in the cloud. Tax is as each vendor states it: Hostinger lists its prices without VAT, Agent 37 says its fees exclude taxes, and the others do not say. The Mini's price is before VAT, which is added at checkout at the rate that applies to you. US dollar prices are converted at the European Central Bank reference rate of 1 EUR = 1.1490 USD, dated 21 September 2026. Prices change, so check with the vendor before you buy. The comparison is limited to features we could verify on each vendor's own page. Trade marks belong to their owners; Claude and Claude Code are trade marks of Anthropic. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by any vendor named here.