Who Rents Out Bare Metal Servers (And How To Pick The Right One For You)

You want a real physical machine in the cloud, not just another shared virtual server. You care about predictable performance, fast failover, and simple pricing, but the bare metal hosting landscape in Europe can look messy at first glance.
In this article, we walk through how a few well‑known providers actually let you rent bare metal servers, what it feels like in real life, and where a service like GTHost fits in when you want instant setup with low friction.

Starting Point: A Simple Bare Metal Baseline

Let’s start with a baseline that actually works in practice.

Imagine you already run a few personal or side‑project services. You don’t want to build a whole rack at home, and you don’t want noisy neighbors on a shared VPS. You just want a small bare metal server in a European data center that you can spin up in minutes.

That’s roughly the experience with providers like Hetzner:

• You click through a short order form.

• You pick a machine with something like two 500 GB SSDs.

• You choose an operating system.

• A few minutes later, you SSH in and you’re done.

Entry pricing hovers around the “about 50 euros per month” mark for an entry‑level box, with no setup fee at the time of writing. For many people in the cloud hosting world, that’s all they really need: decent hardware, simple panel, and quick deployment.

Once you have that as a mental baseline, you can compare everyone else against it.

IONOS (1&1): Sales First, Server Later

Next stop: IONOS (the old 1&1 brand).

If you already use them for domains, email, or DNS, you know they are pretty solid for those basic services. Their virtual machines are also priced competitively and easy to order.

But when you go looking for bare metal servers, the story changes:

• You don’t see a “click here to rent a dedicated server now” page.

• Instead, you get a web form that basically says: “Tell us what you need, and we’ll get back to you.”

That’s fine if you’re an enterprise IT manager planning a multi‑year contract. But if you just want to experiment tonight, or you want a Plan C failover server you can bring online quickly, this slows you down.

In other words, IONOS feels more like a conversation with sales than a “grab a machine and start testing” kind of experience.

OVH: Cheaper Hardware, But With A Pause

OVH is another big name in the bare metal hosting and cloud hosting industry.

You go to their site, you pick a dedicated server with around two 500 GB SSDs, an Intel CPU from around 2021, and monthly pricing starting around 60 euros. That sounds reasonable so far.

Then you see two details:

• There’s about a 60 euro setup fee.

• The stated delivery time is around 24 hours.

Again, if you’re planning ahead for a long‑term project, waiting a day is no big deal. But if your goal is to:

• Fail over quickly from another provider

• Spin up a temporary machine to run some tests

• Try out a new stack this afternoon

…then 24 hours plus a setup fee starts to feel heavy. The cost isn’t horrible, but the experience isn’t “instant bare metal”.

Scaleway: Hourly Bare Metal For Tinkerers

Then you run into Scaleway.

In their French and Dutch data centers, they offer dedicated bare metal servers with two 1 TB SSDs starting around 40 euros per month (roughly €32.99 + VAT at the time this was written), no setup fee, and instant installation.

The interesting part is how they bill:

• You can pay monthly, like everyone else.

• Or you can pay by the hour, at roughly double the effective monthly price.

That second option changes how you think about bare metal:

• You can rent a real server for a few hours to try a migration.

• You can run performance tests on dedicated hardware without committing for a full month.

• You can experiment with different OS setups, storage layouts, or container orchestration tools and then shut the server down without feeling guilty about wasted cost.

On paper, 40 euros a month sounds cheap for what you get. Of course, there’s always a catch, and there are extra details to understand (billing behavior, available regions, specific hardware generations). But the idea is clear: bare metal is no longer only “pay for a whole month and hope you guessed right.”

Where GTHost Fits In

So far we’ve talked about European players you may already know. But maybe you want something more global, with a similar “spin up and play” feeling, and you care a lot about instant deployment on real hardware.

That’s where a provider like GTHost enters the picture. GTHost focuses on bare metal servers you can rent quickly, often with hourly billing and fast provisioning times in multiple locations. That’s useful if you:

• Need a fast disaster‑recovery or Plan C server on another continent

• Want predictable dedicated performance for a short‑lived project

• Prefer clear pricing and low setup overhead

If that sounds like your use case, it can be worth seeing what the actual machines and locations look like.

👉 See GTHost bare metal servers with instant setup and global locations

Once you have a few providers like this on your shortlist, it stops being a random search and starts feeling more like comparing plans for your phone: same idea everywhere, just different trade‑offs in price, speed, and flexibility.

How To Compare Bare Metal Providers (Without Going Crazy)

If you’re trying to pick a bare metal hosting provider today, here’s a simple checklist you can run through instead of reading 20 marketing pages.

1. Setup time

• Can you get a machine in minutes, or do you wait hours or days?

• Is there a clear “ready in X minutes” promise on the order page?

2. Billing model

• Monthly only, or also hourly / daily?

• Any setup fees or minimum terms hidden in the fine print?

3. Hardware clarity

• Do they show you the CPU generation, RAM size, disk type and size clearly?

• Are you picking from a transparent list, or just sending a wish list to sales?

4. Locations and network

• Are there data centers where you actually need them (EU, US, Asia, etc.)?

• Do they give you decent bandwidth and a stable network, or is it vague?

5. Control panel and automation

• Can you reinstall the OS yourself from a web panel or API?

• Is there rescue mode, remote console, and basic monitoring?

If a provider gives you fast setup, clear pricing, and basic automation, you’re already in good territory. From there, it’s mostly about whether their locations, support style, and prices line up with your own use case.

Quick FAQ On Bare Metal Servers

Q: When should I choose bare metal instead of a VPS?
A: When you need consistent performance, more control over the OS, or want to avoid noisy neighbors. Things like game servers, database workloads, or high‑traffic web apps often run better on dedicated hardware.

Q: Is hourly bare metal actually useful, or just a gimmick?
A: It’s useful if you experiment a lot or need short‑term capacity. You can test migrations, benchmark on real hardware, or handle a traffic spike without committing to a long contract.

Q: Do I need to be a Linux guru to use bare metal hosting?
A: Not really. You should be comfortable with SSH and basic server admin. Most providers (including GTHost) give you reinstall tools, rescue mode, and simple panels so you don’t need to rack servers by hand.

Conclusion

Bare metal hosting today is all about trade‑offs: some providers feel like traditional data centers with forms and waiting times, while others make dedicated servers feel almost as easy to spin up as a VPS, with faster failover and clearer costs. If you care about real hardware, instant deployment, and the freedom to experiment without a huge commitment, looking beyond the usual names pays off.

That’s exactly why GTHost is suitable for scenarios where you want quick, low‑friction access to bare metal servers with global coverage and straightforward pricing: you can start small, move fast, and keep full control over your infrastructure. 👉 GTHost is a strong fit when you need fast, on‑demand bare metal hosting for experiments, backups, or failover.