Self-hosted VPS or managed

# A cheap VPS is the right call, right up until 2 AM.

The math is real: a small virtual server costs a few dollars a month, Postgres is free, and an afternoon gets it running. The part the math leaves out is everything after the afternoon. Lathe is the same idea, one machine that is yours alone, with the after-the-afternoon part done for you, from $15 a month. [Start Free - $0 ](https://app.lathe.live/login)[From $15 a month → ](https://lathe.live/pricing)

## What the afternoon does not include. Backups that have been tested On paid plans, setting up a nightly dump is easy. Knowing the dump restores is the part people skip. Here every backup is a daily image, 7 kept, and the latest one is restored to a temporary server every month and checked. TLS and credentials A certificate that renews itself, SCRAM authentication, PgBouncer in front, a password you can rotate from the portal in a minute. On a VPS each of these is a Saturday. Patching in a window you know about Postgres minor versions and OS security updates land in a fixed weekly window, announced in advance. Not when you remember, not when a CVE makes the news. Monitoring and the night call Disk, memory, connections and per-engine figures on the instance page; a machine that stops answering is restarted without you. The 2 AM page goes to us. Still your box Standard credentials, standard ports, standard tools. pg_dump works whenever you want it to. Nothing here stops you leaving for a VPS later if the trade changes. What you give up Root. You do not get a shell or a superuser, and you cannot install anything that is not on the list. That restriction is what makes the rest of this page possible at this price.

## Good for

- A developer who has run their own Postgres and knows what the hours cost
- A small team with no one whose job is the database
- A product where an outage at night has a price
- Someone moving off a metered platform who does not want to take on operations to do it

## Questions

**Isn't a VPS much cheaper? **

The server is cheaper. The total is the server plus the hours: backups, TLS, patching, monitoring and the night something stops. If those hours are free to you and you enjoy them, a VPS is the right call and we will say so.

**Can I get root or SSH? **

No. You get an owner role, a portal, an API and an MCP server. The trade is deliberate: no shell means the operations can be automated, and automated operations are what keep the price where it is.

**How do I move from my VPS to Lathe? **

pg_dump on the VPS, pg_restore into the instance, change one connection string. The 20 TB of traffic included covers the move many times over.

**And back again? **

The same way, at full speed, for nothing. Your data is yours; a service you cannot afford to leave is not one you should stay with.

Every number on this page comes from the [pricing page ](https://lathe.live/pricing)'s facts. [Previous Redis to Postgres: cache, queue, or one machine ](https://docs.lathe.live/guides/redis-to-postgres)[Next Postgres, Redis, NATS and S3 storage on one machine ](https://docs.lathe.live/guides/one-machine)

## Related

- [Lathe vs a self-managed VPS: cost and time ](https://docs.lathe.live/guides/lathe-vs-vps-cost)

A quotable cost and operations table for a self-managed VPS versus Lathe, with honest assumptions and the cases where DIY is the better choice.
- [Your own machine ](https://docs.lathe.live/machine)

Learn what Lathe means by a dedicated virtual machine: one customer per VM, with its own kernel, root filesystem and local disk.

[All guides ](https://docs.lathe.live/guides)

## The box, run for you, from $15 a month.

Live about 5 minutes on average after creation on Free or checkout on a paid plan. Paid plans: cancel any time. [Start Free - $0 ](https://app.lathe.live/login)