IONOS Cloud $200 / 30-Day Free Trial
Source: https://www.ionos.com/cloud/free-cloud-server
Description
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+ 1 German cloud provider IONOS gives new business customers a $200 starting credit (capped at €500) for a 30-day free trial of its IaaS platform — Compute Engine, Object Storage, networking, and Managed Kubernetes. The trial includes up to 8 vCPU cores, 20 GB RAM, 600 GB SSD/HDD storage, and 1 static IP. Managed Kubernetes has its own separate $100 first-month credit. The platform is fully GDPR-compliant with EU data residency (Germany) and one US region (Newark, NJ). AI workloads run via the separately-billed AI Model Hub (OpenAI-compatible API) which no longer offers a free tier in 2026.
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+ 7 1. Go to cloud.ionos.com/compute/sign-up
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+ 8 2. Click "Create test account" — initial access uses the Data Center Designer with limited resources, no payment yet
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+ 9 3. Fill out the registration form: company name, business email, country, contact details (IONOS Cloud is positioned as B2B — personal/non-business signups are typically rejected or asked for company details by the sales team)
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+ 10 4. Verify your email
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+ 11 5. Explore the trial environment (Data Center Designer) without spending credit
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+ 12 6. To unlock the full $200 credit and full feature set, add payment details — credit card is required (no PayPal/SEPA for activation in most regions)
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+ 13 7. Phone verification may be requested in rare cases
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+ 14 8. Sales team may contact within 24 business hours if any verification step needs human review
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+ 15 9. Once activated, deploy resources via the Data Center Designer or via API
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+ 16
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+ 17 Important:
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+ 18 • IONOS Cloud is a business-oriented platform — if you sign up with a generic Gmail/personal address and no company info, expect either rejection or a sales call. A real company name + business email greatly speeds activation.
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+ 19 • 30-day clock starts at activation, not at test-account creation. The trial ends at whichever comes first: 30 days OR €500 of consumption.
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+ 20 • Trial can be extended on request by contacting your assigned account manager.
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+ 26 ResourceFree Trial Limit
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+ 27 CPU cores8 vCPU
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+ 28 RAM20 GB
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+ 29 Block storage (SSD + HDD)600 GB total
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+ 30 Static IPs1
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+ 31 Trial credit$200 (cap at €500 consumption)
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+ 32 Trial duration30 days
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+ 33
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+ 34 Resources excluded from the trial monitoring (and therefore billed separately if you trigger them): outbound traffic, Windows licenses, backups, Object Storage. Watch usage of those via the Billing API.
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+ 40 Managed Kubernetes is offered as a separate $100 first-month credit for new K8s users on top of (or alongside) the $200 Compute Engine trial.
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+ 41
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+ 42 • The Kubernetes control plane is free — you only pay for the worker nodes (compute + storage) they run on
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+ 43 • Dedicated Core: $0.05/hour
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+ 44 • vCPU: $0.018/hour
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+ 45 • $100 covers a small dev cluster comfortably for the first month
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+ 46 • PCI-compliant hardware in EU data centers (Germany), good for GDPR-bound workloads
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+ 47
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+ 48 Apply via the same signup; Kubernetes appears as a separate product in the cloud console after activation.
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+ 54 IONOS Cloud does have an AI Model Hub with an OpenAI-compatible REST API (so you can point any OpenAI SDK at it by changing the base URL). However, in 2026 the free launch trial has ended — usage is pay-as-you-go from the first token. Your $200 trial credit can be spent on AI Model Hub calls if you choose.
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+ 58 TypeModels
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+ 59 LLMs (text)Llama 3.1 8B / 70B / 405B, Mistral variants, gpt-oss-120b (OpenAI's open-weight model)
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+ 60 CodeQwen3-Coder-Next (80B)
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+ 61 Vision-LanguageLightOnOCR 2 (document OCR)
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+ 62 Text-to-ImageFLUX.1 [schnell]
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+ 63 Embeddingsparaphrase-multilingual-mpnet-base-v2, bge-large-en-v1.5, bge-m3
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+ 64
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+ 65 Pricing (token-based): ~$0.17 per million input tokens for small LLMs up to ~$1.93/M for Llama 3.1 405B. Image generation: ~$0.032/image. All inference is hosted in Germany with EU data-residency guarantees. Source: docs.ionos.com/cloud/ai/ai-model-hub and api.ionos.com/docs/inference-openai/v1/.
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+ 66
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+ 67 You can also spin up GPU servers (separate product) on the trial credit, but GPU SKUs burn through $200 fast.
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+ 68
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+ 70
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+ 72
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+ 73 • EU: Frankfurt, Berlin, Karlsruhe (Germany), Logroño (Spain), London (UK)
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+ 74 • US: Newark, NJ
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+ 75
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+ 76 Different products are available in different regions — Cloud Cubes are limited to EU and Newark; AI Model Hub is Germany only (which is also a selling point for EU compliance).
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+ 81
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+ 82 This is the most important catch:
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+ 83
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+ 84 • After 30 days OR €500 consumption (whichever first), the account automatically converts to a productive (paid) account
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+ 85 • Saved payment details are charged for any resources you leave running, billed per minute
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+ 86 • Your servers are NOT auto-deleted — leaving a Cube running after the trial means you start paying immediately
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+ 87 • To avoid surprise bills: delete every server, IP, K8s cluster, and storage volume before the trial ends, OR set up calendar reminders
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+ 88 • You can also contact your account manager to request a trial extension before it expires
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+ 94 • Companies and registered freelancers: Easy — provide company name, VAT/tax ID where applicable
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+ 95 • Solo developers with personal email: Likely to be asked for additional verification or rejected
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+ 96 • Hobbyists / students: Not the target audience — try Hetzner Cloud or Scaleway for cheaper hobby IaaS, or Microsoft Azure for Students for the academic angle
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+ 97 • Region restrictions: IONOS heavily targets EU customers; signups from sanctioned countries are blocked
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+ 102
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+ 103 • Set up budget alerts immediately after activation — IONOS billing is per-minute and silent
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+ 104 • Use the Data Center Designer (drag-and-drop UI) for quick experimentation; switch to API/Terraform for real infra
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+ 105 • Object Storage is S3-compatible but billed separately from the trial credit — careful with bucket sizes
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+ 106 • The AI Model Hub free launch promo ended in 2025 — don't rely on outdated blog posts that mention free AI credits; AI inference now costs from your $200 trial credit
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+ 110
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+ 111 Sources:
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+ 112 • IONOS Free Cloud Server Trial
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+ 113 • IONOS Cloud Compute Engine Sign-Up
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+ 114 • IONOS Trial Conditions FAQ
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+ 115 • IONOS Managed Kubernetes
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+ 116 • IONOS AI Model Hub
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+ 117 • IONOS AI Model Hub Docs
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+ 118 • IONOS OpenAI-Compatible API
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+ 119 • IONOS Compute Engine Pricing
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