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I've been running two VPS servers at Contabo simultaneously, both at the same price (€8.33/month): one with standard SSD storage and one with the advertised NVMe storage ("Cloud VPS 20"). What I found is pretty damning.

The benchmark results

I ran sequential write tests on my NVMe server:

• Sequential write (1 GB, dd conv=fdatasync): 326 MB/s
• Sequential write (2 GB, dd conv=fdatasync): 491 MB/s

Real NVMe storage should achieve anywhere between 1,000 and 7,000 MB/s. These numbers are firmly in SATA SSD territory.

The direct comparison – same price, same provider

Here's where it gets interesting. My SSD server (same price, but double the storage) consistently outperforms the "NVMe" server:

	SSD Server	NVMe Server
Sequential Read	931 MB/s	470 MB/s
Sequential Write	517 MB/s	441 MB/s
Random Read QD1	1,972 IOPS	4,062 IOPS
Random Read QD32	18,015 IOPS	4,328 IOPS

The SSD server reads sequentially at 2x the speed and handles random reads at 4x the throughput of the paid NVMe server. Let that sink in.

Contabo's response

I opened a support ticket (#16240156467). Their explanation: the NVMe I/O is shared across customers on the host system. They then offered a live migration to a different host to improve performance. After the migration completed – nothing changed. Same numbers, same problem.

Their position is essentially: "Yes, you're sharing NVMe hardware with other customers, so you won't get NVMe speeds. Buy a dedicated server if you want that." Meanwhile, the product page still advertises NVMe storage without any mention of this limitation.

Why this matters beyond my individual case

This is only detectable if you know what you're looking for and actually run benchmarks. The average user buying a "NVMe VPS" will simply trust the product page and never know they're not getting what they paid for. That's not an edge case or a misconfiguration – it's the default behavior, confirmed by Contabo support themselves.

If you're considering Contabo and care about storage performance, benchmark before you commit. And if you're already on a "NVMe" plan, it might be worth checking what you're actually getting.

I've been running two VPS servers at Contabo simultaneously, both at the same price (€8.33/month): one with standard SSD storage and one with the advertised NVMe storage ("Cloud VPS 20"). What I found is pretty damning.

The benchmark results

I ran sequential write tests on my NVMe server:

• Sequential write (1 GB, dd conv=fdatasync): 326 MB/s
• Sequential write (2 GB, dd conv=fdatasync): 491 MB/s

Real NVMe storage should achieve anywhere between 1,000 and 7,000 MB/s. These numbers are firmly in SATA SSD territory.

The direct comparison – same price, same provider

Here's where it gets interesting. My SSD server (same price, but double the storage) consistently outperforms the "NVMe" server:

	SSD Server	NVMe Server
Sequential Read	931 MB/s	470 MB/s
Sequential Write	517 MB/s	441 MB/s
Random Read QD1	1,972 IOPS	4,062 IOPS
Random Read QD32	18,015 IOPS	4,328 IOPS

The SSD server reads sequentially at 2x the speed and handles random reads at 4x the throughput of the paid NVMe server. Let that sink in.

Contabo's response

I opened a support ticket (#16240156467). Their explanation: the NVMe I/O is shared across customers on the host system. They then offered a live migration to a different host to improve performance. After the migration completed – nothing changed. Same numbers, same problem.

Their position is essentially: "Yes, you're sharing NVMe hardware with other customers, so you won't get NVMe speeds. Buy a dedicated server if you want that." Meanwhile, the product page still advertises NVMe storage without any mention of this limitation.

Why this matters beyond my individual case

This is only detectable if you know what you're looking for and actually run benchmarks. The average user buying a "NVMe VPS" will simply trust the product page and never know they're not getting what they paid for. That's not an edge case or a misconfiguration – it's the default behavior, confirmed by Contabo support themselves.

If you're considering Contabo and care about storage performance, benchmark before you commit. And if you're already on a "NVMe" plan, it might be worth checking what you're actually getting.