Airnode Review 2026: €4.99/month VPS, Free DDoS Protection, No Contracts

There's a certain kind of frustration that every developer or gamer knows well — you've finally decided to get a proper server, you've done your research, picked a provider... and then the renewal invoice arrives and it's three times what you expected. Hidden fees, mandatory annual contracts, support tickets that disappear into the void.

Airnode is a Dutch hosting company that seems to have been built by people who were annoyed by exactly that.

They're a small, independent provider based in the Netherlands — not a faceless corporation with a call center somewhere — and they've quietly built a reputation for being genuinely good at what they do. Let's take a closer look at whether that reputation holds up.

Who Is Airnode, Actually?

Airnode operates out of the Equinix AM5 datacenter in Amsterdam (also known as Digital Realty AMS5). This isn't some budget facility — it's one of the gold-standard data centers in Europe, which explains why their network performance is consistently solid.

They own their own hardware (it's colocated, not rented), which means no middleman markup, no "we're just reselling someone else's infrastructure" situation. Their DDoS mitigation runs at 2.5 Tbit/s capacity, which is genuinely enterprise-grade protection.

The company is refreshingly small and personal. Multiple Trustpilot reviews mention talking directly with the CEO through support. One customer wrote that the CEO gave them free RAM during a support session. That's... not something you see every day.

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What Do They Actually Offer?

Airnode focuses on three main product lines. Each one is pretty different from the others.

VPS Hosting is their flagship. Plans start at €4.99/month and scale up through configurations ranging from 2GB RAM all the way up to 32GB RAM. Every plan includes SSD storage, 10TB of monthly bandwidth on a 1 Gbps port, full root access, and — importantly — free DDoS protection. There are no long-term contracts. You pay for a period, and if you want to leave, you leave. No penalty, no drama.

The VPS plans are built on KVM virtualization, which means you get genuine isolated resources, not the shared-CPU-and-hope situation that cheaper providers sometimes pull. You can also install a custom operating system if you want to go that route.

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Game Server Hosting is where things get interesting for the gaming crowd. Airnode offers managed game servers for FiveM (GTA V), Minecraft, Palworld, and Discord bots. The key word here is "managed" — you don't need to touch a command line. Their control panel handles everything, and the servers are set up for their specific game requirements.

For FiveM players specifically, Airnode has become a go-to recommendation in hosting communities. The FxServer hosting is plug-and-play — no root access needed, no configuration nightmares. It's genuinely designed for people who want to run a GTA Online community, not people who want to become sysadmins.

Palworld hosting comes in multiple tiers, and Airnode themselves recommend at least the palworld-2 or palworld-3 package for good performance with that game's demanding requirements.

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Dedicated Servers are available for bigger projects. These are fully custom solutions for organizations or projects that need complete resource exclusivity and maximum performance. Pricing is custom, and you'd contact their team to discuss requirements.

The Pricing Breakdown

Here's what the VPS lineup looks like as of 2026:

VPS 1 — 2 vCPU, 2GB DDR4 RAM, 30GB NVMe SSD, 10TB bandwidth — starting from around €4.99/month

VPS 2 — 2 vCPU, 4GB DDR4 RAM, 40GB NVMe SSD, 10TB bandwidth — a step up for moderate workloads

VPS 3 — 3 vCPU, 6GB DDR4 RAM, 50GB NVMe SSD, 10TB bandwidth — solid for most web applications

VPS 4 — 3 vCPU, 8GB DDR4 RAM, 75GB NVMe SSD, 10TB bandwidth — comfortable headroom for growing projects

All plans include free DDoS protection, instant provisioning, and access to their control panel.

The no-contract model is worth emphasizing. You pay monthly and you're free whenever you want. For anyone who's been burned by a provider that locks you into a 12-month commitment and then degrades their service quality halfway through — this matters.

Payments are accepted via credit card (through PayPal), PayPal, iDEAL, and Bancontact.

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What Real Customers Are Saying

Airnode holds a 5-star rating on Trustpilot from over 60 verified reviews. That's a small enough sample size to be skeptical about, but the actual content of the reviews is consistent and specific — which tends to indicate authenticity.

The pattern that shows up repeatedly: fast support, supportive team, good performance. One FiveM server user wrote that performance is excellent and that the support team — specifically calling out someone named Noah — responded quickly and handled both technical issues and basic questions efficiently.

Another customer mentioned speaking with the CEO directly via the support system and described him as "down to earth" and helpful. The CEO apparently gave them free RAM when they were sorting out their setup. A third review mentioned getting a free development server as compensation when there was a billing error.

The main downside that crops up consistently is ping for users outside Europe — around 150ms from regions like Southeast Asia or North America, which is completely expected given the Amsterdam datacenter location. If your users are in Europe, this is a non-issue. If they're not, it's worth factoring in.

Support average response time is reportedly around 10 minutes, which is genuinely fast for a hosting provider at this price point.

Is It Right for You?

Airnode makes a lot of sense for a few specific types of buyers.

European developers and small businesses who need a clean, affordable VPS with solid European latency. The €4.99 entry point is competitive, and the no-contract model removes the commitment anxiety that comes with testing a new provider.

Gamers and community managers running FiveM servers, Minecraft worlds, or Palworld adventures. The managed game hosting is legitimately beginner-friendly — you don't need technical knowledge to get going. The DDoS protection is also a real feature here, not a marketing claim; game servers get hit with attacks constantly.

Developers who value support responsiveness over feature bloat. If you've used a provider where tickets sit for 48 hours while your site is down, Airnode's 10-minute average response time is worth paying attention to.

It probably isn't the right fit if you're primarily serving traffic from outside Europe, or if you need the most powerful dedicated infrastructure available (for that, you'd look at their custom dedicated server options).

Bottom Line

Airnode is doing what a lot of small hosting providers aspire to but rarely manage: building genuine trust through real customer relationships, transparent pricing, and infrastructure that actually holds up.

Starting at €4.99/month with no contracts, free DDoS protection, NVMe SSD storage, and a support team that people actually like talking to — it's a credible choice for 2026, particularly for European users and anyone who wants a game server without the headache.

👉 Check out Airnode's current plans