"A server in Asia" is not one decision but six, because intra-Asian latency is worse than most people expect: Singapore–Tokyo runs ~70 ms, Singapore–Mumbai ~55 ms, Tokyo–Sydney ~110 ms. No single city covers the continent. The good news is that APAC dedicated pricing has a massive spread you can exploit — our stock starts at $35/mo in Singapore and Sydney while the same class of machine costs $131+ in Tokyo — so the right question is "where exactly are my users?", and this comparison answers it city by city.
The six locations at a glance
| City | Entry config | From | Stock | Serves best |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singapore | Xeon E3-1270v6, 32 GB, 2×2 TB | $35/mo | 30 configs | Southeast Asia (SG, MY, ID, TH, VN) |
| Sydney | Xeon E3-1270v6, 32 GB, 2×2 TB | $35/mo | 18 configs | Australia, New Zealand |
| Mumbai | Xeon-E 2386G, 32 GB, NVMe | $117/mo | 11 configs | India, South Asia |
| Taipei | E3-1230v6, 16 GB, 1 TB | $129/mo | 3 configs | Taiwan |
| Tokyo | E-2234, 32 GB, SSD | $131/mo | 10 configs | Japan + US West bridge |
| Seoul | E3-1270v6, 32 GB, SSD | $143/mo | 3 configs | South Korea |
Singapore: the price anomaly worth knowing about
Singapore is simultaneously the most connected hub in Southeast Asia and — in our stock — the cheapest APAC dedicated location, which almost never happens in the same sentence. The $35–37 Xeon E3 tier comes from large-platform stock with 32 GB ECC and mirrored disks; from ~$126 you get modern Ryzen 5600X/NVMe. If your audience spans Southeast Asia broadly, this is the default answer: 15–20 ms to Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, ~30 ms to Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City. Details and the full 30-config list are in our Singapore breakdown.
Tokyo and Seoul: pay for proximity
Japan and Korea are premium markets with premium colocation costs, and the entry prices reflect it: $131 (Tokyo) and $143 (Seoul) for hardware that costs $35 in Singapore. You pay it anyway when the audience demands it — Japanese and Korean users are famously latency-sensitive, and 8 ms local beats 70 ms from Singapore for anything interactive. Tokyo has a second job Seoul does not: it is the standard bridge point toward the US West Coast (~100 ms to Los Angeles), useful for trans-Pacific architectures. Tokyo's upper stock (Ryzen 9700X/9950X with DDR5 and NVMe at $245–336) is genuinely modern; details in the Japan article.
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Mumbai and Taipei: single-purpose, no substitutes
India punishes remote hosting: from Singapore you get 50–60 ms to Mumbai and worse to the north of the country. If Indian users are the product, host in India — the $117 Xeon-E 2386G with NVMe is the right starting point, and the Mumbai article covers the specifics. Taipei is the same logic for Taiwan: three configs from $129, and nothing hosted elsewhere serves Taiwanese users as well. Both are small-stock locations — order lead times can stretch when the exact config is not racked, so plan a few days of slack.
Sydney: Oceania's Singapore pricing
Sydney shares the $35–47 entry tier with Singapore, including 64 GB variants under $50 — remarkable for a market where local providers charge Australian prices. Australia and New Zealand are ~25 ms apart; everything else in APAC is 90 ms+ away, so Sydney is for Oceania audiences, full stop.
How to actually decide
- One country dominates your traffic: host there. Local latency wins every argument.
- Spread across Southeast Asia: Singapore alone.
- "All of Asia" for real: two boxes beat one — Singapore + Tokyo covers ~90% of APAC internet population within 40 ms, and at these entry prices ($35 + $131) the pair costs less than one mid-range Frankfurt machine.
- Batch work with no user latency (builds, rendering, backups): ignore geography, buy the cheapest specs — that is Singapore or Sydney.
All six locations with live stock are in the dedicated catalog — filter by location. Prices and stock counts verified July 6, 2026.
