All Collections
VPS
VPS Management
What Is the CPU Use Limit for VPS?
What Is the CPU Use Limit for VPS?

What happens when CPU limits are reached on VPS

Updated over a week ago

The CPU or Central Processing Unit of a server is responsible for executing instructions and performing calculations for the operating system and applications running on the VPS. One of the main features of VPS is the ability to monitor and control your CPU usage.

There are times when a great amount of processing power is demanded, and CPU cores present a surge in usage:

The CPU usage graph from Hostinger hPanel showing 100% usage during short periods

For security and performance reasons, 100% CPU usage cannot be sustained longer than 120 minutes. Once this limit is exceeded, our internal systems will consider your VPS compromised. If this happens, your VPS CPU capacity will be decreased automatically by 25% per hour as a protection measure.

We recommend monitoring CPU usage to ensure it is under limits at all times, as well as choosing a plan with more resources whenever possible in order to allow room for unexpected spikes in usage. This helps ensure the VPS remains responsive and performs well even under heavy workloads.

In the VPS dashboard, there is an ability to remove the CPU limit once per week in order to test and make configuration adjustments to the software running inside your VPS.

CPU limit banner

If your VPS is consistently using a high amount of CPU resources after you have applied optimization measures and ensured your server is free of malware, it may indicate that your project has outgrown your current plan – in that case, you can consider upgrading your VPS.

Additional resources:

Did this answer your question?