SSD VPS in Japan

What Tokyo offers here, and what it does not

Let's start with the limits, because they save you time. In Tokyo we offer two products: this SSD VPS and the Storage VPS. That is the whole list at the moment. There is no NVMe VPS in Japan, no separate Cloud VPS range, no dedicated server and no shared web hosting page for Tokyo. If you came here looking for one of those, you will want a different city, and we would rather tell you now than have you find out at checkout.

What you do get is simple. The SSD VPS Japan range has six sizes from Cloud VPS 4 to Cloud VPS 18, each a Japan VPS with root access, SSD storage, snapshots, DDoS protection and traffic that is unlimited subject to fair use. It is delivered within 2-3 days. Windows Server, daily backups and a bigger disk are add-ons you pick at checkout. The price shown in the plan cards is live for the datacentre you select, so it may include a location surcharge for Tokyo, and it excludes GST.

The datacentre itself is run by one of our partners. Our own support team looks after every server, wherever it sits.

If your project needs something Tokyo does not have, here is the short version. For a dedicated machine, the nearest option we list is dedicated servers in Singapore, and there is a dedicated range in Sydney as well. For another SSD VPS in Asia-Pacific, see the Singapore SSD VPS or the Australian one. For large-capacity storage in Tokyo itself, the Storage VPS in Japan sits in the same city. The datacentres page shows everything in one place.

Who a Tokyo VPS is for

Tokyo is Japan's capital and largest city. Japan VPS hosting in Tokyo makes the most sense when the people using the service live in Japan. A few typical cases.

Japanese-language sites and shops

An online store, a blog network or a membership site written in Japanese and aimed at Japanese readers. The server in the same country as your visitors usually answers faster than one on another continent, and pages with lots of small requests feel the difference most. Payment and delivery integrations are your side of the job, and root access means you can install whatever connector your shop needs.

Game and app backends

Matchmaking, leaderboards, a chat service, a push-notification relay for a mobile app. These are small, chatty services where shorter round trips are noticeable. A modest plan like Cloud VPS 6 can host a lot of them.

Teams with a Japanese client

Agencies and developers abroad sometimes inherit a client in Japan who wants the application hosted in-country. A Tokyo server answers that request without a long procurement process.

Golden Week and other peaks

The spring holidays known as Golden Week bring heavy leisure traffic: travel bookings, entertainment, online shopping, games. If your service sees that kind of spike, remember that delivery takes 2-3 days and plan your order well before the holiday week, then test under load while there is still time to resize.

Who should look elsewhere? Anyone whose customers are mostly in India, Europe or North America. A visitor in Mumbai loading a server in Tokyo is travelling further than necessary, and our other locations will suit them better.

Cloud VPS 4 to Cloud VPS 18: what runs out first

People usually ask which plan is "best". The better question is what is going to hit its limit first, because that tells you where to spend. On a VPS in Tokyo, as anywhere, the answer is almost always memory, then disk, then CPU, and the network port last.

Memory

Cloud VPS 4 has 8 GB, Cloud VPS 6 has 12 GB, Cloud VPS 8 has 24 GB, and then the jumps get bigger: 48 GB on Cloud VPS 12, 64 GB on Cloud VPS 16 and 96 GB on Cloud VPS 18. A database that wants to keep its working set in RAM, a game server holding world data, or a big cache are the reasons to climb. If you can see the machine swapping, you need more RAM, not more cores.

Disk

The disks are SSD, not NVMe, in sizes of 100 GB (upgradable), 200 GB, 300 GB, 400 GB, 500 GB and 600 GB. That is plenty for code and databases and tight for video, backups or user uploads. If you need a lot of capacity, ask whether a bigger disk add-on or the Storage VPS in Tokyo fits the job better than a larger CPU plan.

CPU

Four vCPUs on Cloud VPS 4 handle a surprising amount. Move up when your load average stays above your core count for long stretches, or when build jobs and image processing crowd out web requests. Game servers often rely on one fast thread, so adding cores helps them less than you might hope.

Port speed

A 600 Mbit/s port on Cloud VPS 8 is generous for web pages and APIs. It matters for downloads, patches and media files. For scale: a fully saturated 1 Gbit/s link moves roughly 10.8 TB a day, which tells you how unlikely it is that a normal website is limited by it.

A sensible rule is to buy the plan that leaves you comfortable at your busiest hour, and use snapshots and a spare afternoon to change your mind later.

Game servers, app APIs and Japanese-language sites: sizing examples

A community game server

A modded Minecraft server for a few dozen friends tends to want several gigabytes of RAM for itself, plus headroom for the operating system. Cloud VPS 6 or Cloud VPS 8 gives you that space. Keep world backups on a different machine, because corrupted worlds are among the most common support stories in the game-hosting world.

A mobile-app backend

A REST or GraphQL API in Node.js or Python, with a PostgreSQL database, can start on Cloud VPS 6. Put the database data on the same SSD and monitor it. When the database begins to dominate memory, either move up to Cloud VPS 8 or move the database to a second Tokyo server and keep the private traffic between them local.

A Japanese-language WordPress or WooCommerce site

Cloud VPS 4 will carry a small blog comfortably. A real shop is a Cloud VPS 8 job, with a page cache and object cache turned on. Make sure the database uses utf8mb4 so Japanese text and emoji survive intact. If you import data from an older system, check whether it exported in Shift_JIS, because mixing encodings is how characters turn into question marks.

A file or media host

Use SSD for what you serve all the time and look at the Storage VPS for the archive you rarely touch. Two products in the same city let you keep both close together.

A development box for a Tokyo client

Cloud VPS 4 with a snapshot habit is enough. Treat it like a disposable workbench, and take a snapshot before every large change.

Keeping a small Tokyo server healthy: updates, swap and a health check

You do not need a monitoring platform to run a quiet, steady server. Three small habits catch most of what goes wrong. The commands below assume Debian or Ubuntu and a root or sudo login.

# automatic security updates
sudo apt install unattended-upgrades
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades

# a 2 GB swap file as a safety net
sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
free -h

Swap is not a substitute for RAM, but it turns a sudden out-of-memory kill into a slowdown you can notice and fix. Unattended upgrades apply security patches without you being awake. Read your logs now and then so you know what it changed, and plan a reboot window for kernel updates.

Next, a tiny health check. Save this as /usr/local/bin/healthcheck.sh and make it executable:

#!/bin/sh
URL="https://example.jp/"
CODE=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -m 10 -w '%{http_code}' "$URL")
DISK=$(df / | awk 'NR==2 {print $5}' | tr -d '%')
if [ "$CODE" != "200" ]; then logger -t healthcheck "web check failed: $CODE"; fi
if [ "$DISK" -gt 85 ]; then logger -t healthcheck "disk at $DISK percent"; fi

Then run it every five minutes from cron with the line */5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/healthcheck.sh. The messages land in the system log. Hook that up to email or a chat webhook when you are ready, or point an outside uptime checker at the same URL so something outside the server is watching too. A server that reports on itself cannot tell you it has crashed.

Speed for visitors in Japan: distance, CDNs and JST

Distance and the number of network hops between a visitor and your server both affect response time. A server in the same country or region as your visitors usually responds faster than one on another continent. Hosting in Tokyo is a sensible way to shorten the path for people in Japan, though it cannot fix a slow database query or an oversized homepage. Always look at your own application first.

Where a CDN fits

A CDN can serve static files near visitors, but the origin server still answers dynamic requests such as logins, baskets and API calls. If your visitors are mainly inside Japan, a Tokyo origin often does the job without a CDN. If you also have followers in Europe or the Americas, a CDN smooths their image and script loading while your Tokyo server remains the origin for everything that changes.

JST and the Indian clock

Japan is on UTC+9 and does not move its clocks, which makes planning straightforward. India is UTC+5:30, so Tokyo is three and a half hours ahead. A 09:00 start in Tokyo is 05:30 in India. An Indian office finishing at 18:00 IST is already at 21:30 in Japan. If your customers are in Japan and your engineers are in India, the overlap is short but workable. A release at 15:00 IST is 18:30 in Tokyo, after most Japanese office hours, with your Indian team still at their desks to watch it.

Patching windows

Choose a window that matches your visitors, not your own convenience. For a consumer service in Japan, that often means the early hours of the morning in JST. Keep the server clock on UTC, and write your maintenance notes in both zones so that nobody misreads them.

Bringing a service over to Tokyo

A migration is a list of small jobs. This table is the one we hand to customers who have never moved a server before.

Run both servers side by side for a day or two where you can. Point a test hostname at Tokyo, click through the whole site and place a test order. Then cut over during your quietest hour. Because delivery of a new server takes 2-3 days, you can use that waiting time to do the dull parts: exporting, documenting and rehearsing.

If you would like a second pair of eyes, the managed support service exists for exactly this kind of task, and you can reach our team any time through the contact page.

APPI and your Tokyo server

This is general information, not legal advice, so check with your own adviser. Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) governs how personal information is handled, including rules for providing data to parties outside Japan. If you serve people in Japan, you should know it exists and read what applies to your business.

A server in Tokyo does not by itself make you compliant. Compliance depends on what you collect, why you collect it, who you share it with and what you tell people. A Tokyo VPS may simplify a conversation with a client who prefers in-country hosting, but it does not replace a privacy policy, a careful look at your processors and a plan for what happens if something leaks.

On a practical level, treat personal data on the server with respect. Limit who has shell access, keep the database off the public internet, encrypt backups before they leave the machine, and delete data you no longer need. If you send copies of records to a third party outside Japan, whether an analytics tool or a support desk, that is the kind of transfer the APPI has specific rules about, so raise it with your adviser early.

When Tokyo is not the right answer

Honesty is cheaper than a refund request, so here is where we would send you instead.

• Most of your visitors are in India: choose the SSD VPS in New Delhi.
• Your audience is spread across Southeast Asia, with a few in Japan: the SSD VPS in Singapore is a hub for that region.
• You need a whole physical machine: look at dedicated servers in Singapore.
• You are comparing VPS hosting Japan options with ones nearer your users: the datacentres page lists every location and what is offered in each.
• You are weighing VPS against shared hosting: the shared vs VPS guide explains the trade-off without a sales pitch.
• You want a quick overview of every VPS product: the VPS overview.

And if your project fits Tokyo, the plan cards above are the place to start. If you are still unsure, write to us through the contact page with a sentence about your workload and where your users are. We will tell you plainly whether a Tokyo server is the right call.