Neckrez

What Happens When Your VPS Balance Runs Out (and How Long $15 Lasts)

Neckrez snapshots and deletes servers when the balance reaches zero. Here is the arithmetic for how many days a top-up lasts and how to avoid surprises.

What happens when your VPS balance runs out

When the prepaid balance hits zero, Neckrez snapshots each server's disk, deletes the server and keeps the snapshot for 7 days. You top up, restore the snapshot in one click and carry on. This guide shows how to work out how long a balance lasts and how to avoid the deletion altogether.

There is no overdraft and no grace card on file, because there is no card. Billing is hourly from a prepaid balance, so the balance simply drains while your servers exist. Plan for the day it reaches zero, not for the day you notice.

  • Snapshot first - every server's disk is snapshotted before the server is deleted.
  • 7 days to restore - the snapshot is kept for 7 days; top up and restore it in one click.
  • Bare metal is different - there are no snapshots for bare metal, so with an empty balance the server is deleted together with its data.

One honest caveat: a snapshot is a safety net, not a plan. Keep your own on-demand backups too, available on Vultr, DigitalOcean and Hetzner servers.

How many days a $15 balance lasts at hourly billing

Divide the monthly plan price by 30 to get a daily cost, then divide your balance by it. The minimum top-up is $15, so that is the natural starting point. These are estimates for a 30-day month and one server.

# days of runtime = balance / (monthly price / 30)
BALANCE=15
for PLAN in "Quark 10" "Ion 18" "Photon 34" "Plasma 62" "Fusion 120"; do
  set -- $PLAN
  awk -v n="$1" -v p="$2" -v b="$BALANCE" 'BEGIN { printf "%-7s $%s/mo -> %.1f days\n", n, p, b / (p / 30) }'
done
  • Quark ($10/mo) - about 45 days on $15.
  • Ion ($18/mo) - about 25 days on $15.
  • Photon ($34/mo) - about 13 days on $15.
  • Plasma ($62/mo) - about 7 days on $15.
  • Fusion ($120/mo) - under 4 days on $15.

Run two servers and the runtime halves. Add the cost of an extra snapshot or an IP swap (one hour of the plan) if you use them.

Rule of thumb: top up at least one full month of everything you run, and top up again when the balance drops below two weeks.

Stopped does not mean free

A server is billed while it exists, even when it is stopped. Powering it off in the panel does not pause the meter. Billing stops only when you destroy the server.

This is the most common reason a balance drains faster than expected: a forgotten test server or a stopped machine you meant to come back to. Once a month, list your servers and destroy what you do not use. Keep a snapshot of anything you may want later.

How to do it on Neckrez

  • Sign up - an email (or Google/GitHub). No KYC, no ID, no phone, no card.
  • Top up the balance in crypto - from $15. For small top-ups the cheapest networks are USDT on BEP20, TON, Polygon or Solana, which cost cents. USDT on TRC20 costs a few dollars extra per top-up and has a higher minimum.
  • Pick plan, location and OS - or a 1-click app if one exists for what you run.
  • Server ready in about a minute - with full root and a dedicated IPv4.
  • Billed hourly - destroy it anytime and billing stops.

Top-ups are final: no refunds, no withdrawals, so top up what you will use. The crypto amount on the payment page already includes processing fees. If an exchange keeps its withdrawal fee and the payment arrives short, the balance is credited with what actually arrived. See crypto VPS hosting for how payment works end to end.

Then set a reminder yourself. A calendar entry every two weeks that says 'check Neckrez balance' costs nothing and prevents the one outage you can fully control. There is no uptime SLA and no downtime credit, so your own habits are the safeguard.

Which server line makes an empty balance hurt least

A VPS is the default for small apps, bots, VPNs and websites, and it has the gentlest failure mode: a snapshot you can restore for 7 days. Dedicated CPU (cores reserved for you) suits databases, CI builds and steady heavy load. Bare metal, a whole physical server, is the step up for your own virtualisation or very heavy databases, but it has no snapshots or backups, so an empty balance deletes it with its data.

If you run bare metal, keep a larger buffer and your own off-server backups. If a plain VPS is enough for you, it usually is.

FAQ

Can I get a refund of unused balance? No. Top-ups are final, with no refunds and no withdrawals. Top up only what you expect to use.

Does a stopped server still cost money? Yes. A server is billed while it exists, even when stopped. Destroy it to stop billing.

Can I restore after the server is deleted? For VPS, yes: the snapshot is kept for 7 days, and you top up and restore in one click. Bare metal has no snapshots.

Get started

Plans start from $10/month, billed hourly. Top up and deploy a server in about a minute. Neckrez rents VPS, Dedicated CPU and bare metal servers, and GPU servers when the provider has capacity, all on one crypto balance billed by the hour.