Comparison
Sinkron vs. a $5 VPS
The $5/month VPS is the default home for a side project, a bot, or a small API. It's also a fixed box you rent whether or not it's doing anything — and you're on the hook for provisioning, securing, and keeping it up. Here's how Sinkron compares, and where a VPS still makes sense.
Sinkron vs. the usual options
Here’s how Sinkron compares to the usual ways people put an app online.
| Feature | Sinkron | A $5 VPS | A managed app host (PaaS) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runs across many machines (load-balanced) | Paid tiers | ||
| Setup | Push your app, get a URL | Provision, SSH, secure it yourself | Connect a repo |
| Public URL + TLS | DIY (nginx/caddy + certs) | ||
| Health checks / auto-restart | |||
| Billing | Per second, only while running | Flat monthly | Monthly + metered |
| Cost to run 24/7 | Pennies/hr, pay as you go | $5/mo, flat | $5+/mo + usage |
| Idle cost | Stop → $0 | Still $5/mo | Minimums apply |
| Set your own price (as a provider) |
Comparisons are directional; competitor pricing and features change.
You pay for a VPS even when it does nothing
A VPS bills a flat monthly rate around the clock. A bot that answers a few requests an hour, or an API that's busy for a couple of hours a day, still costs you the full month — and the box sits mostly idle. Sinkron bills by the second for what you actually run, and when you stop a session the meter stops at zero. For bursty or low-traffic workloads that's usually a fraction of a flat VPS bill.
One box is a single point of failure
A VPS is one machine. If it falls over, your app is down until you notice and fix it. Sinkron runs your app across several independent machines at once, load-balanced behind a single public URL — if one drops, traffic shifts to the others and we replace it. You scale by adding runners instead of resizing one server.
No provisioning, no securing, no certs
With a VPS you provision the server, SSH in, install a runtime, set up a reverse proxy, get TLS certificates, and keep it all patched. With Sinkron you point it at a container image and it comes up behind an HTTPS URL with health checks and auto-restart — there's no server for you to babysit. The 2-minute quickstart walks through it.
When a $5 VPS still wins
We'd rather be honest than oversell. A plain VPS is the better fit when you need persistent local disk, root / full OS control, to run non-HTTP daemons or your own database on the same box, or a single long-lived stateful process where a flat monthly rate is simply predictable. Sinkron shines for stateless, HTTP-serving apps — web apps, APIs, bots with dashboards, background jobs — that benefit from pay-as-you-go pricing and running across a network rather than on one server.
The short version
- Predictable, always-busy, needs a full server? A $5 VPS is fine.
- Small, bursty, or you just want a URL without running a server? Sinkron is cheaper and less work — and it doesn't fall over with one machine.
Try it on your own app
Free to sign up, billed by the second, no lock-in. See how pricing works or read how to host a small always-on app cheaply.