Bandwidth vs Monthly Traffic: What Mbps and GB Actually Mean

Two numbers get confused more than any others when buying a VPS: bandwidth (Mbps) and monthly traffic (GB). They measure completely different things, and mixing them up affects both experience and cost.

Bandwidth (Mbps) = instantaneous ceiling

• It decides how fast you can go at a given moment; 10 Mbps is about 1.25 MB/s.
• It affects download speed, concurrency, and how large transfers feel.

Monthly traffic (GB) = a total over time

• It decides how much data you may move in a month; once it is gone, you are limited.
• It affects sustained volume, not instantaneous speed.

How to relate the two

• At full speed: bandwidth (Mbps) / 8 x 86400 is roughly the GB you could move per day (theoretical ceiling).
• Example: 10 Mbps at full tilt is about 100 GB/day, so a 500 GB/month plan lasts about 5 days if you never idle.
• Takeaway: for most NAT plans the real bottleneck is traffic, not bandwidth.

Over-quota handling here

• Once monthly traffic is exceeded: we throttle, do not bill extra, and speed returns on the 1st of the next month.
• Add-on packs are not offered, so if you need heavy sustained traffic, pick a plan with a bigger allowance.

How to choose

• Short bursts of speed: look at bandwidth.
• Sustained volume (crawlers, monitoring, sync, streaming): look at monthly traffic.
• Both: move up a tier.

Next steps

• Compare plan specs
• More in the FAQ