Published: 27.09.2026
Traffic is the amount of data your server sends and receives over the network in a month. On a VPS it is the number that decides whether your plan covers your usage or whether extra charges apply. Our VPS plans include 20 TiB of traffic per month, and additional traffic is charged per terabyte. This article explains how to think about that number, what uses it and how to keep it under control.
What traffic means
Traffic is all the data that passes through the network interface of your server. A visitor who downloads a page creates traffic, and so does a backup pushed to remote storage, a package update, an e-mail sent by the server or a file that someone downloads from it. The service terms explain how incoming and outgoing data are counted, and whether they are added together. Read that part before you plan large transfers, because it changes the total.
Units: TiB and TB
Hosting allowances are often written in tebibytes (TiB), which use powers of 1024, while many storage products use terabytes (TB), which use powers of 1000. One TiB is about 1.1 TB, so 20 TiB is roughly 22 TB in the decimal units many people use. Keep the unit in mind when you compare numbers with other offers or with your own estimates.
What 20 TiB means in practice
Suppose an average visit downloads about 2 MB of pages and images. Twenty tebibytes then covers roughly eleven million such visits in a month, before any other traffic is counted. A site with a few thousand visits a day uses only a small fraction of that. A large image gallery, video streaming or a file download service uses traffic much faster, so compare the allowance with the content you actually serve.
Where the traffic goes
- Visitors downloading pages, images and files from your site.
- Backups uploaded to remote storage, and restores downloaded back.
- Package updates and software downloads.
- E-mail sent and received by the server.
- Repository pulls, container image downloads and synchronisation jobs.
Monitoring and reducing usage
The network graph in the client area shows traffic over time, so check it weekly during the first months. A sudden jump usually means a new download job, a crawler hitting the site or a backup running at the wrong time. To reduce usage:
- Compress images and use modern formats where the site supports them.
- Enable compression on the web server for text files.
- Serve static files through a content delivery network if many visitors are far away.
- Schedule large backups and syncs for quiet hours, and compress them before transfer.
- Delete old files and logs you no longer need, so that backups and sync jobs carry less data.
Backups and traffic
A common surprise is that backups use traffic. Backups that leave the server use outgoing traffic, and restoring them uses incoming traffic. A full backup pushed every night adds up quickly over a month. Incremental or deduplicating backup tools send only the changes, which keeps the monthly total lower. Check the total after the first full week of backups, and adjust the schedule if the numbers are higher than you expected.
Frequently asked questions
Will I pay extra if I go over 20 TiB? Additional traffic is charged per terabyte, as stated for the VPS plans. Check the current rates in the store, because prices are not listed here.
Does traffic between my own servers count? It depends on the counting rules in the service terms. Traffic on a private network may be treated differently from public traffic, but do not assume this without reading the terms.
How do I see how much traffic I used? Use the network graph in the client area for the current period. Keep your own record as well, because graphs show trends and are not an invoice.
