Docs / Guides
How to choose a VPS location: a latency-first guide
Ping rules of thumb, when location matters, and how to pick the right region from 29 cities on 6 continents.
Latency rules of thumb
Light in fiber covers roughly 100 km per millisecond, so same-country hosting gives you 5–20 ms, same-continent 20–60 ms, intercontinental 100–250 ms. For websites and APIs, under 100 ms feels instant; for game servers and trading, every millisecond is felt.
Pick by audience, not by office
Host where your users are, not where you live. European audience: Amsterdam or Frankfurt are peering kings. US-wide: New Jersey for the east, Los Angeles for the west, Dallas as a compromise. Asia: Singapore and Tokyo cover most of the region.
Privacy-minded users often pick by jurisdiction instead — that's legitimate too. With hourly billing the experiment is cheap: deploy in two regions, ping both, keep the winner.