[lamnk]

Network and bandwidth are absolutely not free but certainly not that expensive as the three major public clouds are charging: $0.1 per GB equals to $100 per 1TB transfer.

Linode, Digital Ocean and other hosting companies sell small VPSs with 4TB bandwidth for $10/month and still making profit. At places like OVH, Hetzner bandwith is virtually unlimited.

[Macha]

One caveat for the VPS business model is they're almost certainly relying on the fact that most users don't use all their allocation and overprovisioning. Whereas something pay as you go like s3 or r2 is going to have users paid for volume equalling their used volume.

[lamnk]

Linode, Digital Ocean, OVH, Hetzner all have hourly billing.

[Macha]

Sure, they have this model for CPU time, but not for network bandwidth. If your monthly allocation is 4TB and you use it for one day, you have 4TB / 30 bandwidth in that day. If you go over it they reserve the right to cut you off, if you go significantly under it, they don't discount you.

The average Linode customer is not using 136GB of bandwidth per host per day.

[refulgentis]

That is 1/250 the bandwidth for 60x the price, no?