Pay-Per-Use

Pay-Per-Use Billing

Pay-Per-Use is one of two billing models at RespawnHost: your game server is billed per second of actual runtime — when it’s stopped, you pay nothing. The alternative for always-on servers are fixed plans with a fixed price and term.

How It Works

1. You top up your account balance (5–250 EUR per top-up).
2. When you start a server, billing begins and your balance decreases in real time.
3. When you stop the server, billing stops immediately.
4. Your data is preserved even when the server is off — you only stop paying for compute resources.

The per-second rate depends on the RAM package you selected when creating the server. CPU (fair use 6 vCores), disk space (30 GB), and player slots (unlimited) are included at no extra cost. The panel always shows the current hourly rate so you can estimate costs before starting. To start a Pay-Per-Use server, your balance needs to cover at least 4 hours of runtime.

Cost Example

Suppose your game server costs 0.10 EUR per hour:

• Running 24/7 for a full month: approximately 72 EUR
• Running 4 hours every evening (120 hours/month): approximately 12 EUR
• Running only on weekends (64 hours/month): approximately 6.40 EUR

This model rewards you for using resources only when you need them.

Monthly price cap

Even at 24/7 usage the price is capped: the panel shows each server’s monthly maximum (e.g. max. €6.18/month). You never pay more than that amount per month, regardless of how many hours the server runs.

Comparison to a fixed plan

	Pay-Per-Use	Fixed plan
Billing	Per second of runtime	Fixed price per term (30/90/180 days)
Server off	No charge	Included — server runs 24/7 anyway
Ideal for	Casual sessions, events	Communities, public always-on servers
Commitment	None	Chosen term; renewal can be disabled anytime

If your server runs around the clock anyway, a fixed plan is the cheaper choice.

What Happens When Your Balance Runs Out

If your balance reaches zero while a Pay-Per-Use server is running, the server is stopped automatically. Your data is not deleted — simply top up and restart the server. Your balance can never go negative.

VPS Billing

Note that KVM VPS servers use 30-day prepaid billing rather than per-second billing. You pay each period in advance, and the server remains available for the entire billing period regardless of whether it is running.