What is the difference between a VPS and a VDS server?

Where does the word VDS come from?

"VDS" means virtual dedicated server, and in general use it names the same thing as a VPS. Wikipedia's article opens with both: "A virtual private server (VPS) or virtual dedicated server (VDS) is a virtual machine sold as a service".

Two regional uses give the word a sharper meaning:

• In Russian-language hosting, some providers draw a technical line. Cloud4U, a Russian provider, wrote in 2021 that a VPS is "virtualization at the OS level", while a VDS is "hardware virtualization". In that reading a container is a VPS and a KVM machine is a VDS.
• In Turkish hosting, "VDS sunucu" is the everyday product word. The search suggestions we collected on 2 November 2026 put "vds nedir" and "vds sunucu" among the strongest non-English queries on the topic.

In English-language offers, the word is mostly a marketing label for a VPS with more resources set aside, and each host decides what it covers.

What do hosts that sell a VDS actually promise?

According to Cobaltfell's survey of 2 November 2026, of ten products named VDS at hosts that take crypto without an ID document, eight said the CPU, the cores or the whole hardware were the customer's alone, and two promised only "dedicated resources". The processors ranged from 2024 Zen 5 chips to a 2009 Xeon.

What should you compare instead of the name?

Compare the sentence about the CPU, not the product name. A VPS with written, dedicated cores is worth more than a VDS whose page only says "dedicated resources". Six questions cover what the label leaves open:

1. Does the host say the CPU, the cores or the vCPU are dedicated? Look for the processor named in the sentence.
2. Is a vCPU a full core or one thread? Few hosts answer. The guide is a dedicated vCPU a core or a thread? explains why it matters.
3. Which processor, from which year? A dedicated core on a 2009 Xeon and one on a 2024 Ryzen are different products.
4. Is the RAM overcommitted? "Dedicated" memory means it is not lent to other guests.
5. Can you run at 100% for hours? Some plans set fair-use limits on sustained load.
6. What does steal time say once you run your workload? The page what CPU steal time is and how to check it shows the commands.

The page on the difference between a shared vCPU and a dedicated vCPU goes through the behaviour behind each answer, and what a dedicated CPU VPS costs per core in November 2026 quotes the dedicated sentence of 22 hosts.

For sizing by workload rather than by label, start with what VPS a GitLab Runner or CI build needs.

Where does Cobaltfell fit?

Cobaltfell sells what many hosts would call a VDS, under the plain name VPS: Linux virtual servers on KVM whose vCPU are dedicated: each vCPU of your plan is held for your VPS alone, on server processors launched in 2022 or later, with NVMe storage and root access over SSH. The answers to the six questions are written in our terms rather than implied by a label:

• vCPU: A vCPU is one hardware thread of the host processor. Yours are pinned one to one to your VPS and never lent to another customer, and the two threads of a physical core stay together, so every 2 vCPU make one whole core that no neighbour shares.
• Processor: Every plan runs on AMD EPYC 9004/9005 server processors (Zen 4 / Zen 5), a family first launched in November 2022; a VPS is never moved to an older node without telling you first.
• Memory: The RAM of your plan is set aside for your VPS and is not overcommitted.
• Load: Full load is allowed for as long as your work needs it: no CPU credits, no burst window and no throttling after some minutes at 100%.
• Steal: On a dedicated vCPU, steal time should sit at or near zero. We will publish the figure we measure on our own machines, with its date, and never an estimate.

Prices: Fell 2 $10.49, Fell 4 $19.49, Fell 8 $38.24 and Fell 16 $129.87 a month on the 12-month term ($14.98, $27.84, $54.63 and $185.53 month to month). Each plan is in Amsterdam, Zurich and Bucharest; there is no Istanbul or Moscow location. The figures behind each price are on how much a dedicated-core VPS costs at Cobaltfell.