The true-cost hosting calculator

How to read the result

The result to trust is "you actually pay" — the effective cost per month across the whole time you'll own the site. It assumes you buy the promoted term at the intro rate, then renew once at the standard rate, which is exactly how a real hosting bill works. The "sticker says" figure is the fantasy the ad sells you: the intro price as if it lasted forever. The gap between the two is the renewal cliff, and it is usually where most of your money goes.

Why the timeframe matters so much

Slide the timeframe and watch the ranking change. Over a single year, the host with the lowest intro price wins — a $1/mo deal is unbeatable for 12 months. Stretch it to three or five years and the renewal price takes over, because you spend far more months at the renewal rate than at the intro rate. Since most websites outlive their first term by a wide margin, the longer horizons are the honest ones. Set the slider to how long you actually expect to keep the site.

The trick the calculator exposes

The long-lock hosts — the ones that need a three- or four-year prepay — look cheapest over exactly three years because their renewal doesn't hit until year four. That's the trick. Lengthen the timeframe past the intro term and their true cost jumps into view. The hosts that stay near the top no matter how far you slide are the ones with a genuinely low renewal, which is why our best cheap web hosting ranking weights the renewal price first.

The preset prices are each host's advertised rate for its cheapest real shared plan, read on 2026-09-10 using US pricing. They are advertised figures, not measured benchmarks, and hosting promos change often — so use the Custom option to plug in the exact numbers you see at checkout today, including any term you're offered. The math is the same either way: intro for the term, renewal for the rest.