Bare metal hosting is what you move to when “good enough” performance and control stops being good enough.

If you’re running latency-sensitive apps, training AI models, dealing with strict compliance requirements, or just tired of noisy neighbors on shared infrastructure, renting the entire physical server—no hypervisor, no shared resources—is often the smartest move. You get consistent performance, predictable resource usage, and full control over the operating system and stack.

With dedicated and bare metal infrastructure seeing a real resurgence for AI and compliance-heavy workloads, choosing the right provider matters more than ever. The wrong choice can leave you overpaying for idle capacity, fighting with limited support, or stuck in a region that doesn’t match where your users actually are.

Below, you’ll find a breakdown of the best bare metal hosting services right now, starting with Atlantic.Net (a strong first stop if you care about compliance and hands-on support), plus several other options that fit different use cases and budgets.

The Best Bare Metal Hosting Services

If you just want the short version:

• Atlantic.Net – Best for most (especially if you care about compliance and hands on support)
• Hivelocity – Best for globally distributed bare metal with fast deploys and deep automation
• Liquid Web – Best fully managed bare metal for businesses that want white-glove support
• OVHcloud – Best DDoS-hardened bare metal for value pricing
• phoenixNAP – Best API-driven bare metal cloud with hourly billing
• Hetzner – Best budget bare metal for European workloads

If you’re not sure whether you need bare metal vs. traditional dedicated hosting, here’s the simplest way to think about it:

• Choose bare metal when you need maximum performance, hardware-level control, or strict isolation for compliance and security.
• Choose standard dedicated when you want similar isolation, but with more out-of-the-box management and slightly less concern about squeezing every drop of performance from the hardware.

Let’s walk through each provider, when they make sense, and where they might fall short so you can pick the right fit the first time.

Atlantic.Net – Best Bare Metal Hosting for Most

Atlantic.Net puts bare metal front and center for organizations that care about performance and regulatory requirements. You get high-end Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC configurations (including 36-core and 64-core options) with SSD or NVMe storage, 20 TB+ bandwidth on 1 Gbps ports, and aggressive pricing that often starts in the low-$100s per month on promo plans.

What really separates Atlantic.Net is the combination of infrastructure, compliance, and support:

• They back their infrastructure with a 100% network and infrastructure uptime SLA, which is rare at this price point.
• Their data centers and hosting offerings support HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2, and SOC 3 compliance, making them a strong fit for healthcare, finance, and other regulated industries.
• Bare metal is available out of data centers in key U.S. metros like New York, Dallas, Ashburn, Orlando, and San Francisco, with extended reach into Canada, Asia, and Europe.

Where Atlantic.Net shines

• Compliance-ready environments – If you need HIPAA, PCI, or SOC-aligned hosting, Atlantic.Net has a long track record and audit-ready infrastructure to back it up.
• Strong out-of-the-box hardware – Multiple pre-built plans from 6-core Xeon E-series up through 64-core EPYC, with generous RAM and SSD/NVMe storage options.
• Custom builds and scaling – Don’t see what you want? You can request custom bare metal configurations tailored to your workload.
• U.S.-based, always-on support – 24/7/365 support with phone access and a heavy focus on helping customers design compliant, high-availability architectures.

Choose Atlantic.Net if: you want serious bare metal performance wrapped in compliance, documentation, and a 100% SLA. It’s especially compelling if your business is in healthcare, finance, or ecommerce and you want bare metal that won’t turn into a compliance headache later.

Hivelocity – Best for Global Bare Metal at Scale

Hivelocity brands itself as the “bare metal cloud company,” and it fits: you get 50+ global data centers, instant-deploy servers, and a strong API-driven platform that makes it easy to automate large fleets of physical machines.

It’s a good fit if you want bare metal performance with cloud-like orchestration.

Where Hivelocity shines

• Fast provisioning – Popular configurations can be deployed in as little as 7 minutes, with most instant-deployment servers ready in under 20 minutes.
• Deep automation – Robust REST API plus integrations with tools like Terraform and Ansible make it easy to treat bare metal as code.
• Global footprint – Great if you need low-latency presence across North America, Europe, and beyond, especially for gaming, streaming, or SaaS workloads.
• In-house 24/7 support – Hivelocity emphasizes that it does not outsource support; you get staff on-site in their U.S. data centers.

Where Hivelocity might fall short

• Less compliance marketing than Atlantic.Net or Liquid Web – You can absolutely build secure, compliant setups, but Hivelocity doesn’t lead with HIPAA/PCI messaging the same way Atlantic.Net does.
• More DIY on architecture – It’s powerful and flexible, but best suited to teams that are comfortable planning their own network topology, redundancy, and security.

Choose Hivelocity if: you care about global reach, fast provisioning, and strong automation more than you care about having a hand-holding compliance partner.

Liquid Web – Best Managed Bare Metal for Growing Businesses

Liquid Web’s bare metal servers are designed for customers who want dedicated hardware plus serious managed support. Plans run on high-end hardware (NVMe SSDs, modern Xeon Gold processors, high-bandwidth connections) and are spread across multiple data center locations, giving you good geographic redundancy.

Where Liquid Web stands out is its managed hosting focus—you can offload a lot of system administration, monitoring, and backups to their team.

Where Liquid Web shines

• Full single-tenant performance – You get a dedicated physical machine with direct hardware access and no virtualization layer, which is ideal for big databases, analytics workloads, and high-traffic apps.
• Managed services available – Liquid Web offers managed tiers that cover OS patches, security updates, monitoring, and backups if you don’t want your team dealing with all of that.
• Compliance-friendly – They highlight use cases in finance, healthcare, and retail that need strict security and compliance, and pair bare metal with HIPAA and PCI hosting options.

Where Liquid Web might fall short

• Pricing is on the premium side – You’re paying for managed support and higher-end infrastructure. If you’re strictly optimizing for price per core, there are cheaper options.
• Less “pay by the hour” flexibility – Compared to bare metal cloud platforms like phoenixNAP, Liquid Web is more traditional in its billing and contract structure.

Choose Liquid Web if: you want bare metal performance but also want a provider that handles most of the heavy lifting on management, security, and support.

OVHcloud – Best DDoS-Protected Bare Metal for Value Pricing

OVHcloud is one of the most popular bare metal providers globally, especially for cost-conscious deployments. Their dedicated/bare metal servers come with:

• Built-in anti-DDoS protection on every server
• SLAs ranging from 99.90% to 99.99% uptime, depending on the server range
• Global data centers with strong presence in Europe and North America

OVHcloud is especially appealing if you’re dealing with DDoS-prone workloads like gaming servers or exposed APIs and want protection included by default.

Where OVHcloud shines

• Anti-DDoS included – You don’t pay extra for the core DDoS mitigation infrastructure; it’s built into the platform and capable of handling very large attacks.
• Good price-to-performance – OVHcloud’s dedicated/bare metal pricing is usually aggressive compared to U.S. premium managed providers.
• IPv4 and IPv6 support – Each server includes both, with options to rent additional IPv4 addresses up to a sizable limit.

Where OVHcloud might fall short

• Support expectations – OVHcloud is more “infrastructure first” than “white-glove managed.” You should expect to handle more of your own system administration.
• More self-managed experience – Great for teams that are comfortable with Linux, networking, and automation; less ideal for those who expect managed support similar to Liquid Web.

Choose OVHcloud if: you want solid bare metal with built-in DDoS protection and strong value pricing, and you’re comfortable running your own stack.

phoenixNAP – Best API-Driven Bare Metal Cloud with Hourly Billing

phoenixNAP offers a Bare Metal Cloud platform that sits somewhere between traditional dedicated hosting and public cloud: you get true bare metal servers, but with API, CLI, and web UI–driven provisioning, global locations, and flexible hourly or monthly billing.

This makes phoenixNAP attractive for AI workloads, CI/CD pipelines, ephemeral environments, and high-traffic apps where you want raw performance but still need to scale up and down quickly.

Where phoenixNAP shines

• Cloud-like consumption of bare metal – Spin up pre-configured dedicated servers in minutes via API or UI, and pay by the hour or month.
• Aggressive entry-level pricing – General-purpose instances start as low as $0.08/hour or under $40/month, with more powerful configurations still competitive.
• Global locations – Data centers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, with 10–50 Gbps network capacity on many instances.

Where phoenixNAP might fall short

• Less “traditional” managed hosting – It’s built for teams that want automation and cloud-style operations. If you want a managed provider to do everything for you, Liquid Web or Atlantic.Net will feel more familiar.
• Billing complexity – Hourly plus reserved pricing is powerful, but you do need to pay attention to instance lifecycles and reservations to optimize costs.

Choose phoenixNAP if: you want real bare metal with the agility of cloud—especially for AI, big data, or bursty workloads where you don’t want to commit to long contracts on every server.

Hetzner – Best Budget Bare Metal in Europe

Hetzner is a go-to option if you need low-cost, high-performance dedicated servers in Europe. Their dedicated root servers (effectively bare metal) start at around €37.30 per month, with strong CPU, RAM, and storage specs for the price.

They’re popular among developers, hobby projects, startups, and even serious production workloads that prioritize cost efficiency.

Where Hetzner shines

• Excellent price-to-performance – It’s hard to beat Hetzner on raw pricing for dedicated hardware in the EU, especially compared to big-name hyperscalers.
• Wide range of server lines – EX, AX, RX, SX, GPU, and auction servers let you match hardware to workload and budget.
• GDPR-friendly, EU-based – Great if you need data residency in Germany or Finland and want to lean into EU privacy regulations.

Where Hetzner might fall short

• Primarily Europe-centric – If most of your users are in North America, latency may be higher unless you architect around it.
• Self-service, less hand-holding – Hetzner is more bare-bones on support than premium managed providers; you should be comfortable running your own infrastructure.

Choose Hetzner if: you want inexpensive, reliable bare metal in Europe and you’re happy to manage the stack yourself.

How to Choose the Right Bare Metal Hosting Provider

Bare metal is not one-size-fits-all. Use these criteria to narrow things down:

1. Location and latency

• Keep latency low by choosing data centers close to your primary users.
• Atlantic.Net and Liquid Web are strong for U.S.-centric workloads; OVHcloud, Hetzner, and phoenixNAP give you solid options in Europe and beyond.

2. Compliance and regulatory needs

• If you’re handling PHI, cardholder data, or regulated financial data, prioritize providers that explicitly support HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2/SOC 3, or similar frameworks.
• Atlantic.Net and Liquid Web both offer dedicated compliance-oriented hosting, while phoenixNAP and OVHcloud can also be part of compliant architectures with proper configuration.

3. Management vs. control

• Need help with OS patches, backups, and security? Look at managed bare metal from Liquid Web or a combination of Atlantic.Net hardware plus their managed services.
• Want maximum control with your own DevOps team? Hivelocity, OVHcloud, phoenixNAP, and Hetzner all lean more self-managed.

4. Automation and scaling

• If you want to treat bare metal like cloud (infrastructure as code, rapid scaling, ephemeral environments), prioritize API-driven platforms like Hivelocity and phoenixNAP.
• If your workloads are steady and long-lived, traditional monthly bare metal from Atlantic.Net, Liquid Web, OVHcloud, or Hetzner may be more cost-effective.

5. Budget and cost model

• For premium managed bare metal, expect to pay more—but you’ll save on internal staffing. (Liquid Web, Atlantic.Net.)
• For value pricing, OVHcloud and Hetzner are tough to beat.
• For pay-as-you-go, phoenixNAP’s hourly bare metal cloud is ideal when workloads are spiky or unpredictable.

When Should You Move to Bare Metal?

Bare metal is usually the right move when:

• You’ve hit performance or jitter issues on VPS or shared cloud instances.
• You need hardware-level control (e.g., specific CPUs, GPUs, or storage layouts).
• Compliance or security requires strict isolation and full visibility into the stack.
• You’re running AI/ML, big data, real-time analytics, or ultra-low-latency apps where virtualization overhead becomes noticeable.

If that sounds like you, start by comparing Atlantic.Net’s bare metal offerings with one or two of the other providers above that match your budget and geography. From there, you can fine-tune around management level, automation, and specific hardware needs.