LightYear uses a prepaid wallet system. You top up your account balance and servers are billed by the hour — you only pay for what you use. There are no contracts, no hidden fees, and no surprise invoices at the end of the month.
We accept all major credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express) processed securely through Stripe. Wallet top-ups can be made in any amount from $5 upwards. Cryptocurrency payments are not currently supported.
The minimum wallet top-up is $5 USD. There is no maximum — you can load as much credit as you need. All transactions are processed securely through Stripe and a receipt is emailed to you automatically.
You'll receive email alerts when your balance drops below approximately 5 hours of runtime at your current spend rate. If the balance reaches zero, your running servers will be automatically stopped to prevent unexpected charges. Your server data is retained for 7 days, giving you time to top up and restart.
Yes. Unused wallet credit can be refunded on request. Contact our support team with your account email and we'll process the refund to your original payment method within 5–10 business days.
None. LightYear has no setup fees, no activation fees, and no long-term contracts. You can start with as little as $5 and cancel at any time. Billing stops the moment you delete your server.
Each server plan has a fixed hourly rate displayed on the pricing page. Billing starts the moment your server is provisioned and stops when you delete it. Stopped (powered-off) servers continue to accrue storage charges since your disk remains allocated.
Yes. For convenience, all plans display an estimated monthly cost based on 730 hours (a full calendar month). If you run a server for the full month, the hourly charges will add up to approximately the listed monthly price.
Most servers are provisioned and ready within 60–90 seconds of clicking Deploy. You'll receive your IP address and SSH credentials immediately in the dashboard. Some GPU instances may take up to 3 minutes depending on regional availability.
We offer a wide range of OS images including Ubuntu (20.04, 22.04, 24.04), Debian, CentOS Stream, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Fedora, and FreeBSD. You can also deploy from a snapshot of an existing server to replicate your exact environment across regions.
You can upgrade to a larger plan at any time from the server detail page. Downgrades require a snapshot-and-redeploy workflow to ensure data integrity. Storage size cannot be reduced once allocated.
Once deployed, your server's IP address and SSH credentials are shown in the dashboard. Connect via SSH using the root password set during deployment, or upload your own SSH public key for passwordless access. Full root access is provided on all instances.
Yes. Snapshots capture the full disk state of your server at a point in time. You can use snapshots to back up your environment, clone servers across regions, or roll back after a failed update. Snapshot storage is billed at a flat per-GB rate.
Deleting a server permanently destroys the associated disk and all data on it. This action is irreversible. We strongly recommend taking a snapshot before deleting any server that contains important data.
Absolutely. There are no contracts or long-term commitments. Simply stop or delete your server from the dashboard and billing stops immediately. Any remaining wallet balance can be refunded on request.
Custom ISO upload is on our roadmap. Currently, you can deploy from any of our curated OS images or from a snapshot of an existing server. Enterprise customers with specific ISO requirements should contact our sales team.
LightYear offers NVIDIA A16, A40, A100 (40GB & 80GB), and L40S GPU instances. Each GPU tier is purpose-built for different workloads: A16 for inference and light training, A40/L40S for rendering and mixed workloads, and A100 for large-scale AI training and HPC.
Yes. Our GPU instances are purpose-built for AI/ML workloads. All GPU nodes come with CUDA pre-installed and support popular frameworks including PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, and ONNX Runtime. Multi-GPU configurations are available for distributed training.
GPU instances are currently available in select high-capacity regions including New York, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Singapore, and Tokyo. We are actively expanding GPU availability to additional regions. Check the deploy page for real-time availability.
Yes. Docker and NVIDIA Container Toolkit (nvidia-docker2) are supported on all GPU instances. You can pull any container from Docker Hub or a private registry and run GPU-accelerated workloads immediately. Kubernetes support is also available.
The A100 80GB has twice the GPU memory, making it suitable for very large models (70B+ parameters), full-precision training, and workloads that require fitting an entire model in VRAM. The 40GB variant is ideal for most inference and medium-scale training tasks at a lower cost.
Each server plan includes a generous monthly bandwidth allowance (listed on the pricing page). Inbound traffic is always free. Outbound traffic beyond the included allowance is billed at a low per-GB rate. Bandwidth resets at the start of each calendar month.
Yes. All servers are provisioned with both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address at no extra cost. IPv6 is enabled by default and ready to use immediately after deployment. You can also add additional IPv4 addresses for an additional fee.
All servers are connected to our 25 Gbps backbone network. Individual instance uplinks range from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps depending on the plan tier. Our network is peered with major carriers and IXPs in every region for low-latency connectivity.
LightYear operates 32 data centres across 6 continents — including North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, South America, and Africa. Key locations include New York, Los Angeles, London, Frankfurt, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, São Paulo, and Johannesburg.
Yes. Basic DDoS mitigation is included on all servers at no extra cost. Enhanced DDoS protection with higher mitigation thresholds and advanced filtering is available as an optional add-on from the server settings page.
Yes. LightYear's infrastructure is SOC 2 Type II certified, covering security, availability, and confidentiality. Our data centres are also ISO 27001 certified. Compliance documentation is available to enterprise customers on request.
Your server data is stored on enterprise-grade NVMe SSD storage within our certified infrastructure. Data at rest is encrypted using AES-256. Snapshots and automatic backups are available as optional add-ons. We recommend enabling backups for any production workload.
Yes. LightYear provides a cloud-level firewall that lets you define inbound and outbound rules by port, protocol, and source IP. Firewall rules are applied at the network edge before traffic reaches your server, providing an extra layer of protection.
Yes. You can upload one or more SSH public keys to your account and select them during server deployment. SSH key authentication is strongly recommended over password-based access for production servers.
Sign up at lightyear.host/register using your email address or via Google/GitHub OAuth. Email verification is required before you can deploy your first server. The entire process takes under two minutes.
Team accounts with role-based access control are on our roadmap. Currently, each account is single-user. Enterprise customers who need multi-user access should contact our sales team for a custom arrangement.
Click 'Forgot password' on the login page and enter your account email. You'll receive a password reset link within a few minutes. If you signed up via Google or GitHub OAuth, password reset is managed through your OAuth provider.
To close your account, first delete all running servers and ensure your wallet balance is zero (or request a refund). Then contact our support team with your account email and we'll process the closure within 2 business days.
Still have questions?
Our support team is available 24/7. Browse the Help Centre for detailed guides or reach out directly.