OpenBSD VPS for $5 a Year

2026-09-08

I believe I have found the cheapest VPS provider on the internet. It costs just ~$5 per year! You read that right. Not $5 per month or even quarterly. That is the total annual cost.

Best of all, OpenBSD is natively supported as one of the default image selections. (They also provide several other OS images, including FreeBSD if that’s more your jam)

TL;DR

The VPS provider is TierHive. Creating an account is fairly straightforward for the technically savvy, but I’ve included a detailed guide below for those who might be interested.

Note: TierHive is a NAT VPS service. If you require more flexibility or direct access to your own IP address then this option might not be for you.

The VPS Specs at a Glance

Spec	Value
CPU (vCores)	1 vCPU
CPU Priority	Medium Priority
RAM	512 MB
Fast Disk (NVMe)	2 GB
IOPS Tier	Medium Performance
Network Tier	Medium Performance
Slow Disk (HDD)	None

If you want to see a live example running on TierHive with the same specs as above, take a look at openbased.xyz.

Setting Things Up

Start by creating a new account with TierHive and then log in. From there, navigate to the VPS Instances page from the sidebar options and click Deploy VPS.

On the VPS configuration page set the following values:

Friendly Name: your-cool-name
Hostname: your-cool-hostname
Location: Preferred location
Operating System: OpenBSD 7.9
Resources: Set RAM to at least 512MB and NVMe to 2GB
Performance Tiers: Leave these at their defaults (or increase if you desire)

Initial TierHive VPS setup config options — The TierHive UI for configuring a new VPS instance

Then select your private IP from any of the available sets provided and target your DNS. Make sure you add and attach your own SSH key to this VPS instance as well.

With those settings the monthly token usage for this VPS will be ~0.409384, which equals out to just $4.90 per year!

Now deploy it!

First Boot

Once the VPS has finished deploying, you’ll be able to access its specific settings under the same VPS Instances menu. Your SSH access details and other important information will be under the Server Information panel.

Now is a good time to SSH into your server and take a look around at your install to make sure everything works as intended.

Custom Domains

You already have a working OpenBSD VPS install, but many of us would prefer to connect custom domains and setup proper SSL security. TierHive provides its own HAProxy service to make this extremely painless.

Navigate to the HAProxy tab in the sidebar menu and then click Add Domain. You will be asked to add a custom TXT DNS record to your domain. Add it and wait for it to propagate before proceeding.

Heads Up: While you are changing DNS records, now might be a good time to point your A records at the Location IP you selected during the VPS setup. This will save us time in the next steps.

Once TierHive confirms DNS record you can continue.

Under the newly added domain’s panel, click Configure Backends. The following are the standard settings I use, but feel free to change as you see fit:

How do you want to configure your backend servers?: Single Server
How should your single server be accessed globally?: Regional Access
Your Backend Server: Select your OpenBSD VPS here and set port 80

Select Save Configuration and you’re done!

Configuring SSL

The issuing of SSL certificates is handled automatically by TierHive. If your domain is correctly setup (see above) and pointing at the proper Location IP, simply select Activate SSL. TierHive will configure everything for you and you will see details of the certificate under the domain’s panel once it completes.

Initial TierHive HAProxy settings UI — The TierHive UI for configuring the built-in HAProxy service

That’s it. Enjoy your very cheap (in price) OpenBSD VPS!