1GB VPS - practical things to do (other than idling)

raindog308 · December 2025

@OpaqueRegistrant said: Make a website. Don't use Wordpress - it's not MySQL, it's Wordpress itself that's terrible. Make your own website from scratch with HTML or PHP.

Or use one of the many static site generators (Hugo, Jekyll, etc.) to turn markdown into HTML.

OpaqueRegistrant · December 2025

Don't use Markdown - you'll learn a lot more by writing HTML yourself and you can even write your own HTTP server.

Neoon · December 2025

run your own vpn network, game over it, youtube, whatever.

oloke · December 2025

@themew said:
@oloke said:
Hi!

Great question. I see a couple of great answers already but I wanted to mention that enabling zram could help you run services even if they technically require more RAM than available.

On Debian 13 it's really simple:
# to install zram generator of systemd
$ sudo apt install systemd-zram-generator

# or /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf on debian 12 and older
$ sudo nano /usr/lib/systemd/zram-generator.conf
[zram0]
zram-size = ram   # or 1024 for example for 1GB of zram
compression-algorithm = zstd

# to show stats about zram usage
$ /sbin/zramctl 
NAME       ALGORITHM DISKSIZE   DATA COMPR TOTAL STREAMS MOUNTPOINT
/dev/zram0 zstd          960M 127.6M 58.3M 64.6M       1 [SWAP]
From now on, you'll have swap device added. Remove your existing swap or set it to lower priority to not interfere with zram. The zram should be much faster (both speed and latency) than traditional swap, since the data isn't written to the disk rather kept in RAM (even if it says swap), just compressed.

If you want to check how fast zstd algorithm can compress the data on your server, run:
$ zstd -b1
 1#Synthetic 50%     :  10000000 ->   3154228 (x3.170),  330.6 MB/s, 1632.2 MB/s
If the number seems low, there are also other (possibly faster) compression algorithms such as lzo or lz4 available.

Personally, I mostly run relays (syncthing, tor, i2p) and a couple of static sites on my idlers, this works perfectly well even on 1GB. I'm pretty sure wordpress or most other php apps (with mariadb) should be able to run well in this scenario too.
Have you compared zstd to lz4? I believe zstd has a lower compression ratio than lz4 but I haven't tested it. Wondering if you have. BTW, great post and info.

Hi!

Thanks for the feedback. There have been some benchmarks of zram compression algorithms done over the years. I did my own too out of curiosity. I don't think it really matters all that much but I would personally go with Zstd just because it offers great compression ratio and doesn't eat up your CPU like zlib (deflate).

I did tests on my 425 MB RAM VM:

$ free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:             425         242          10           0         183         183
$ cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
60

Here are some of mine results, I compiled vvenc each time and measured the time it takes to make release:

lz4:

real    10m20.103s
user    8m55.085s
sys 0m47.346s

zstd:

real    10m15.237s
user    8m42.183s
sys 0m49.176s

zlib (deflate):

real    12m3.689s
user    8m53.075s
sys 1m22.702s

I took note of memory used during the process:

lz4:

Memory Usage:
  Average Used:      256.9 MB
  Average Available: 168.0 MB
  Peak Used:         399.0 MB
  Lowest Available:  26.0 MB

ZRAM Compression:
  Average Original:    87.2 MB
  Average Compressed:  23.9 MB
  Average Ratio:       3.66x
  Peak Ratio:          10.67x
  Average Space Saved: 72.7%

Swap Usage:
  Average Used: 92.0 MB
  Peak Used:    295.0 MB

zstd:

Memory Usage:
  Average Used:      252.2 MB
  Average Available: 172.7 MB
  Peak Used:         406.0 MB
  Lowest Available:  19.0 MB

ZRAM Compression:
  Average Original:    83.4 MB
  Average Compressed:  15.3 MB
  Average Ratio:       5.44x
  Peak Ratio:          6.18x
  Average Space Saved: 81.6%

Swap Usage:
  Average Used: 88.2 MB
  Peak Used:    204.0 MB

zlib:

Memory Usage:
  Average Used:      269.9 MB
  Average Available: 154.9 MB
  Peak Used:         407.0 MB
  Lowest Available:  18.0 MB

ZRAM Compression:
  Average Original:    89.3 MB
  Average Compressed:  16.8 MB
  Average Ratio:       5.29x
  Peak Ratio:          5.94x
  Average Space Saved: 81.1%

Swap Usage:
  Average Used: 95.2 MB
  Peak Used:    230.0 MB

I also wanted to try lzo (and lzo-rle) but for some reason my zram didn't support it:

$ cat /sys/block/zram0/comp_algorithm
lz4 lz4hc [zstd] deflate

And did some graphs:

lz4:

zstd:

zlib:

Probably an issue with kernel module not loaded but didn't have time to fiddle with that much. I suspect the ratio and speed will be similar to lz4 since both use LZ77 algorithm with no entropy coding.

nikio · December 2025

@OpaqueRegistrant said:
Don't use Markdown - you'll learn a lot more by writing HTML yourself and you can even write your own HTTP server.

The nice thing about markdown is that the spec supports you using HTML tags. So you can use traditional markdown for brevity, and then write fancy HTML5 canvas illustrations right within your documents/blogposts that will be seamlessly picked up by your ssg. This is why I don't like blog engines like Ghost et al. I don't need a fancy card UI to embed an image gallery.

nikio · December 2025

@Void said:
hmm is this some sort of ragebait ? it gotta be

If it's ragebait, I don't know who's the target. The immediate thing that jumps to my mind is that most docker "tutorials" 🤮say you need 2GB RAM as a prerequisite and a scarily-large proportion of people cannot run something that isn't packaged as a docker container. So 1GB RAM might seem unworkable.

But I still remember days when 2GB USB sticks were considered inordinately large, and 1GB RAM was a luxury.

I remember my dad renting an Atlantic 512mb VPS for me a long time ago. I was able to run a website, a Teamspeak server, a Mumble server and a VPN gateway on it with RAM to spare.

(The bigger irony is we cancelled it because it was "too expensive' at $15/year).

Void · December 2025

@nikio said:

@Void said:
hmm is this some sort of ragebait ? it gotta be

If it's ragebait, I don't know who's the target.

LET folks

I remember my dad renting an Atlantic 512mb VPS for me a long time ago. I was able to run a website, a Teamspeak server, a Mumble server and a VPN gateway on it with RAM to spare.

I think you answered your own question here

DrNutella · December 2025

You can set up vswap and get more ram free. I also have a post on how to download more ram.

https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/212495/free-ram-limited-supply-until-website-goes-offline

eb1995 · December 2025

@nikio said:

@Void said:
hmm is this some sort of ragebait ? it gotta be

If it's ragebait, I don't know who's the target. The immediate thing that jumps to my mind is that most docker "tutorials" 🤮say you need 2GB RAM as a prerequisite and a scarily-large proportion of people cannot run something that isn't packaged as a docker container. So 1GB RAM might seem unworkable.

But I still remember days when 2GB USB sticks were considered inordinately large, and 1GB RAM was a luxury.

I remember my dad renting an Atlantic 512mb VPS for me a long time ago. I was able to run a website, a Teamspeak server, a Mumble server and a VPN gateway on it with RAM to spare.

(The bigger irony is we cancelled it because it was "too expensive' at $15/year).

@DrNutella said:
You can set up vswap and get more ram free. I also have a post on how to download more ram.

https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/212495/free-ram-limited-supply-until-website-goes-offline

Yeah vram is the way to go especially with these blazing fast disks that accompany these tiny 1gb plans.

nikio · December 2025

Well "blazing-fast" is a little bit of an exaggeration most times. Not everyone runs PCIe Gen 5 NVMes.

tentor · December 2025

Using drive as swap could make provider angry due to high IO, resulting in IOPS limiting.

Use zRAM instead

rm_ · December 2025

@abytecurious said: 1GB VPS for. It is too small for a webserver that needs MySQL (e.g. your run of the mill Wordpress site).

LXC instance for my main website with Lighttpd and dokuwiki (no DB):

             total        used
Mem:         1048576      142956

Secondary LXC with Matomo and MySQL:

             total        used
Mem:         1048576      322724

Another one with TT-RSS and MySQL:

             total        used
Mem:         2026496      707496

On this one MySQL is tuned a bit aggressively for performance, increasing all the buffers according to what mysqltuner said etc., even if that led to higher RAM usage.

Still under 1G!

So it's absolutely doable. I'm not a fan of WordPress though, there gotta be better alternatives by now.

wii747 · December 2025

Zap hosting network is poor for ntp servers!

Deadshot · December 2025

I run a personal email server, NSD and unbound and everything works really well. Never had any issue

hugo_sabdo · December 2025

is your ip reputation clean enough? if so, maybe you can use it for a private mail server, specs like that you can use Mail in a Box (MIAB) for the mail server. it is enough to handle portfolio emails, and smtp accounts can be used for email alert notifications from some monitoring tools that you use. especially if you use a private ticketing system.

4kvps · December 2025

personal website, personal V2Ray (VPN), Backup other VPS...

tempask · December 2025

check my vps, 2g, use free -m, is follow:
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 1890 684 108 7 1299 1205
Swap: 0 0 0

running rustdesk server, sing-box, a http server, 1g ram run email server, ftp server, http server(no heavey cgi kind), no any problem.

CloudHopper · December 2025

Things I use daily that are running on a 1vCPU/1GB RAM VPS, which haven't been mentioned in this thread yet.

Headscale: https://headscale.net/stable/

NTFY: https://ntfy.sh/

Radicale: https://radicale.org/v3.html

Navidrome, (on a storage server): https://www.navidrome.org/

AudioBookshelf, (on a storage server): https://www.audiobookshelf.org/

abtdw · December 2025

zerotier

newbieshan · December 2025

Intranet Penetration

DataRecovery · December 2025

@MannDude said:
You can do a ton in 1GB of RAM. Debian 13 runs fine in 256MB of RAM. Most low-to-low-medium traffic PHP driven site with tuned MySQL will work fine with 1GB of RAM.

This.

I tested WordPress on a 1 GB, HDD-only VPS and it worked perfectly fast.

Also tried Python (Django Machina) with the same outcome.

1 GB is plenty for numerous tasks.

@OhJohn said:
For about twenty years I had a rather large website on a (managed) dedicated server with 256MB RAM (and 20 or 80GB HDD disk, don't remember)

@JohnFilch123 said:
I have got 256MB OVZ server and this is small I run globalping there and a proxy.

@Saragoldfarb said:
So true. Low-end isn't only about the price, it's about getting the max out of the bare minimum of resources. I must admit I cancelled my last remaining 128mb vm as it was getting a bitch to maintain but I still have a couple of 256 boxes rocking it!

Look at these finest gentlements ↑

I've also been using 128 MB and 256 MB machines from @Cam (buy one, you won't be disappointed!) for years and have no plans to cancel. Will keep those for as long as I can.

Cam · December 2025

@DataRecovery said:

@MannDude said:
You can do a ton in 1GB of RAM. Debian 13 runs fine in 256MB of RAM. Most low-to-low-medium traffic PHP driven site with tuned MySQL will work fine with 1GB of RAM.

This.

I tested WordPress on a 1 GB, HDD-only VPS and it worked perfectly fast.

Also tried Python (Django Machina) with the same outcome.

1 GB is plenty for numerous tasks.

@OhJohn said:
For about twenty years I had a rather large website on a (managed) dedicated server with 256MB RAM (and 20 or 80GB HDD disk, don't remember)

@JohnFilch123 said:
I have got 256MB OVZ server and this is small I run globalping there and a proxy.

@Saragoldfarb said:
So true. Low-end isn't only about the price, it's about getting the max out of the bare minimum of resources. I must admit I cancelled my last remaining 128mb vm as it was getting a bitch to maintain but I still have a couple of 256 boxes rocking it!

Look at these finest gentlements ↑

I've also been using 128 MB and 256 MB machines from @Cam (buy one, you won't be disappointed!) for years and have no plans to cancel. Will keep those for as long as I can.

Ty for the mention! ❤️

uekix · December 2025

Proof GUI is the most hogging resource bastard.

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