The $300 on the home card is a new-account credit through 5 November 2026. It does not change the $5.00 a month price. Link a card or PayPal, spend the credit inside 30 days, and destroy the server when you are done. Stopping the server leaves the hourly charges running.
The credit conditions are the sentence on the home card. The billing, refund, and account sentences are from Vultr's docs, opened 7 October 2026. The review is the buy-or-skip page.
Affiliate: BestUSAVPS may earn a commission if you buy through this button. It is a customer referral (sid buvps-vt-use-top). The $300 line does not change the $5.00 price. Source links on this page are plain links.
Use the button when you want to try the platform and you will take the servers down inside the credit window. Do not use it because you think the 1 GB plan now costs less than $5.00 a month. The home card prints $5.00 a month for 1 vCPU, 1 GB, 25 GB SSD and 1 TB, and then a separate sentence: new accounts through that button get $300 of credit, a credit card or PayPal must be linked, duplicate accounts are not eligible, and unused credit expires after 30 days. That sentence stays on the card through 5 November 2026.
The account guide, updated 18 November 2025, says "Vultr offers free credits for up to 30 days for you to try our services." That sentence does not name $300. The $300 figure on this site is the home card's line for the button, not a monthly sticker. After the 30 days, the plan price on the card is the price.
The same account guide says that after you verify email you land on the billing page and add a payment method. If you choose a credit card, it tells you to pick "I just want to link my credit card - $0.00 deposit to verify without an initial deposit." Your card provider may place a small temporary authorization hold that is released shortly. Other payment options on that page require a small deposit. That deposit is the page's verification step, not a second plan price.
The promotional-code article, updated 16 December 2025, says a code from the Gift Code section needs a valid credit card or PayPal account linked to the profile. One promotional code is permitted per user. Promotional credits are subject to expiration and are non-transferable. A code you type is a different step from the credit the home-card button describes. The button on this page does not add a code to the link.
Deploy the server you actually want to try, and read its hourly and monthly fields before you click. The specs page, from 3 October 2026, prints monthly_cost 5 and hourly_cost 0.007 on vc2-1c-1gb. The billing article says Cloud Compute is billed up to 672 hours a month. 672 × $0.007 = $4.704. That product is arithmetic on those two figures. It is not a second monthly price, and it is not the $300.
The account guide says "Ensure to deprovision the resources before your credits expire or end to avoid getting billed extra." Watch the credit balance in billing. When the credit is gone, or when the 30 days on the home card are gone, a server you left running bills at its own rate. Destroy it before that point if you do not want the invoice.
Powering the server off is not the same action as removing it. The billing article, updated 16 December 2025, says hourly charges begin when a server is deployed, whether it is powered on or off. Servers that are stopped but not destroyed continue to incur hourly charges for reserved resources such as compute, storage, and IP address allocations. The note on that page says "To stop billing for a server, you must destroy it from your account. Stopping a server does not suspend billing."
Destroy from the account when the test is over. Invoices are generated on the 1st of each month for the previous period. A server destroyed on the last day of the credit window still has the hours it already ran. The minimum billing unit is one hour.
The refund article, updated 16 December 2025, says "Vultr does not offer refunds for services. All payments are final, and credits are non-refundable." Unused $300 does not come back as cash. A temporary card hold, if your bank places one, is the account guide's authorization hold, not a refundable deposit this page can price. Billing questions go through a support ticket in the Vultr console, which is the path that article names.
Use the button for a new account that can link a card or PayPal, will not reuse an old account, and will destroy what it deploys before the unused credit expires. Skip it if you need the 1 GB plan to cost less than $5.00 a month after day 30. Skip it if you plan to stop the server and leave it in the account. The specs page keeps the city list, the São Paulo price, and the two hourly fields.
Affiliate, bottom of the guide: sid buvps-vt-use-bot. Same customer-referral destination as the button above. The $300 line does not change the $5.00 price.
No. The home card prints $5.00 a month for 1 vCPU, 1 GB, 25 GB SSD and 1 TB. The $300 line on that card is a credit for new accounts through the button. It stays on the card through 5 November 2026. Unused credit expires after 30 days. A credit card or PayPal must be linked, and duplicate accounts are not eligible.
No. The billing article, updated 16 December 2025 and opened 7 October 2026, says hourly charges begin when a server is deployed, whether it is powered on or off. Stopped servers that are not destroyed keep incurring hourly charges for compute, storage and IP addresses. To stop billing, destroy the server from the account.
The account guide says Vultr offers free credits for up to 30 days. The home card says unused credit on this button expires after 30 days. Link a card with the $0.00 deposit choice if that is the method you use, or link PayPal if the screen offers it. Watch the credit balance. Destroy every server you deployed before the credit ends. Credits are non-refundable, and a payment is final, so a leftover credit is not cash back. The specs page keeps the hourly rate and the 672-hour arithmetic.
Quoted sentences are from the Vultr docs below, opened 7 October 2026. The $300 conditions are the home card's sentence, kept through 5 November 2026. Buttons go through /go/vt-use-top/ and /go/vt-use-bot/. URLs in this list are plain links.