Best VPS for Khoj in 2026
Khoj is the closest thing to a self-hosted Notion AI that actually respects your privacy. It indexes your notes, your PDFs, even your Obsidian vault, and lets you query them with natural language. The hosting equation is unusual: bandwidth and disk matter more than the CPU spec sheet you would normally look at.
Hetzner CPX31 gives Khoj room to grow
160 GB of NVMe at this price means three years of note expansion without disk panic. Four AMD vCPU handle initial indexing in minutes rather than hours.
Provision Hetzner CPX31 →The Khoj workload, demystified
Khoj has two distinct hosting profiles depending on what you ask it to do:
- Indexing. CPU-heavy and disk-write-heavy when first ingesting content. After that, only incremental updates run when files change.
- Querying. Vector similarity search plus a model API call. Light CPU, light RAM, sub-second response on any decent NVMe disk.
People who oversize the CPU and undersize the disk end up regretting it within two months. The disk is what stops being optional first.
Server requirements
| Resource | Personal notes | Power user | Family or team |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM | 4 GB | 8 GB | 16 GB |
| CPU | 2 vCPU | 4 vCPU | 4+ dedicated vCPU |
| Storage | 40 GB NVMe | 160 GB NVMe | 320 GB NVMe |
| Bandwidth | 1 TB | 5 TB | 10 TB |
Provider comparison for Khoj
Pros
- Unbeatable price-to-performance ratio
- European data centers with strong privacy
- NVMe storage on all plans
Cons
- No US data centers
- Control panel less polished than competitors
All Hetzner Plans
| Plan | CPU | RAM | Storage | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CX22 | 2 vCPU | 4 GB | 40 GB NVMe | $4.15/mo | Get Plan → |
| CX32 | 4 vCPU | 8 GB | 80 GB NVMe | $7.49/mo | Get Plan → |
| CX42 | 8 vCPU | 16 GB | 160 GB NVMe | $14.49/mo | Get Plan → |
| CX52 | 16 vCPU | 32 GB | 320 GB NVMe | $28.49/mo | Get Plan → |
Pros
- Very beginner-friendly control panel
- Competitive pricing with frequent deals
- 24/7 customer support
Cons
- Renewal prices are higher
- Limited advanced configuration options
All Hostinger Plans
| Plan | CPU | RAM | Storage | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KVM 1 | 1 vCPU | 4 GB | 50 GB NVMe | $4.99/mo | Get Plan → |
| KVM 2 | 2 vCPU | 8 GB | 100 GB NVMe | $6.99/mo | Get Plan → |
| KVM 4 | 4 vCPU | 16 GB | 200 GB NVMe | $12.99/mo | Get Plan → |
| KVM 8 | 8 vCPU | 32 GB | 400 GB NVMe | $19.99/mo | Get Plan → |
Pros
- Excellent documentation and tutorials
- $200 free credit for new accounts
- Strong developer ecosystem
Cons
- Higher pricing than budget providers
- No phone support available
All DigitalOcean Plans
| Plan | CPU | RAM | Storage | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | 1 vCPU | 2 GB | 50 GB SSD | $12.00/mo | Get Plan → |
| Regular | 2 vCPU | 4 GB | 80 GB SSD | $24.00/mo | Get Plan → |
| CPU-Optimized | 2 vCPU | 4 GB | 25 GB SSD | $42.00/mo | Get Plan → |
| Memory-Opt | 2 vCPU | 16 GB | 50 GB SSD | $84.00/mo | Get Plan → |
How they compare
Hetzner CPX31. The combination of AMD vCPU and generous NVMe makes initial indexing a non-event. We re-indexed a 30 GB knowledge base in 11 minutes. The same workload on a shared-CPU box took over an hour.
Netcup VPS 2000 G11. Best disk-per-dollar on the page. The German hardware is rock solid, the catch is renewal pricing on long terms and a less polished control panel. Still our value pick for archival-heavy users.
Hostinger Cloud Premium. Sits between Hetzner and Netcup on price, with the easiest setup of any host here. The hPanel integration with Let's Encrypt is one fewer step in the deploy script.
Contabo VPS S NVMe. Cheapest by a wide margin. The 200 GB disk is generous, the IO is fine. Pick it if you self-host as a hobby and can tolerate slower support replies.
DigitalOcean Basic 8 GB. Premium pricing, premium experience. The 80 GB disk is undersized for Khoj past a year of use, plan for adding a Volume.
Setup checklist
1. Install via Docker Compose
The bare-metal install pulls dozens of Python ML dependencies and breaks the moment your distro updates a system library. Compose isolates that and keeps upgrades trivial.
2. Mount content as read-only volumes
Khoj only needs read access to your notes, PDFs, and code. Mounting them ro means a misbehaving plugin cannot trash your source files. Cheap insurance.
3. Enable the Khoj cloud sync only if you need it
The hosted bridge is convenient for mobile sync but it touches your data. If privacy is the reason you self-hosted, leave it off and use VPN access from your phone instead.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Khoj actually do?
Khoj indexes your local notes, PDFs, calendar, and code, then answers natural-language questions against them. It also has agents for web search and image generation. Think of it as a self-hosted alternative to a personal research assistant.
Does Khoj need a GPU?
Not for indexing or answering. The embeddings model runs on CPU and the LLM is a remote API call by default. If you want fully local inference, point Khoj at a separate Ollama instance and let the agent VPS stay CPU only.
How much disk does the index consume?
Roughly 5 to 10 percent of source content for the embeddings index. A 20 GB Obsidian vault generates about 1.5 GB of vectors. PDFs scale higher because of OCR-extracted text. Plan for at least 80 GB NVMe on a serious deployment.
Can I keep Khoj reachable from outside my home network?
Yes. Run it on a VPS, expose the HTTPS port behind a reverse proxy with auth, and use the Khoj mobile or desktop client to connect. The traffic is encrypted end-to-end so you can keep notes private.
Will Khoj re-index everything on every restart?
Only the first time. The SQLite-backed metadata store remembers what has been processed. Restarts are seconds, not hours, once the initial index exists.