Infomaniak VPS for Self-Hosted VPN 2026: Swiss Privacy Cloud Review

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When you pick a VPS host for a self-hosted VPN in Europe, the talk usually goes straight to Contabo, Hetzner, and OVH. Those are the three proven workhorses we covered in depth in our main VPS comparison. But there is a fourth option that rarely shows up in generic benchmark posts. It deserves its own review: Infomaniak Public Cloud.

The reason it earns its own article is jurisdiction. Infomaniak is based in Geneva, Switzerland. It runs its own data centres on Swiss soil, runs fully on green energy, and sits under a legal setup that differs in real ways from German, French, and US options. Some self-hosted VPN users care a lot about privacy - journalists, remote teams in regulated fields, families who want to own their data. For them, Swiss jurisdiction is not a sales pitch. It is a fact you can check.

This review looks at Infomaniak's Public Cloud/VPS plan, set up for WireGuard self-hosting. We cover pricing, a setup walkthrough on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, latency from Western Europe, and an honest verdict. We say where it wins and where cheaper options make more sense.

Why Swiss jurisdiction matters for self-hosted VPN

Your VPS host is set up and stores data in one country. That country, not where your VPN client sits, decides which state can force the release of your traffic metadata. This point matters a lot for self-hosted VPN threat models.

Switzerland has refused Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) requests from the US and EU in a documented series of cases. ProtonMail's 2021 case is the most cited. Swiss authorities ordered the company to hand over IP logs after a French police MLAT request. But that came only after Swiss courts ruled the request legal under Swiss law, with appeal rights intact. Here is the key gap versus US providers: no National Security Letters, no FISA Section 702 bulk collection, and no gag orders without a judge's review.

The Swiss legal stack for VPS hosting:

• nFADP (new Federal Act on Data Protection, 2023): The updated Swiss data law, lined up with GDPR principles. Its reach beyond Swiss borders is similar to GDPR Article 3.
• No mandatory data retention law: Switzerland has no EU-style retention rule for hosting providers. ISPs must keep some communications metadata, but pure hosting providers (your VPS) have no such duty.
• Swiss adequacy decision: The EU treats Switzerland as adequate for GDPR cross-border transfers (since 2000, reconfirmed). So EU-based clients that connect to a Swiss VPN server don't trigger Article 46 SCCs.

Now compare other countries. Germany (DE) enforces GDPR well, but the BND shares spy data with Five Eyes, and Section 100g StPO lets a court reach telecom metadata. France (FR) has RGPD plus broad surveillance powers under LCEN/SREN. The United States (US) has FISA 702, NSLs, and PRISM.

Switzerland is not perfect - no country is. But for one clear use case - hosting a private WireGuard VPN for a journalist, researcher, or remote team - it offers the best mix you can get today. You get strong rule of law, real privacy laws, and political independence, all on a VPS with Western European latency.

Infomaniak Public Cloud - overview

Infomaniak is a Swiss hosting company. It was founded in 1994 in Geneva and now employs around 300 people. Most European "privacy-friendly" hosts farm out their data centres to third parties. Infomaniak does not. It owns and runs its own sites in the Geneva area, a fact backed by its ISO 27001 and ISO 50001 audits.

Infrastructure highlights:

• Location: Geneva, Switzerland - own data centres, not colocation
• Energy: 100% renewable electricity sourced from hydroelectric partnerships, primarily Verbier area (Valais). ISO 50001 energy management certification.
• Certifications: ISO 27001 (information security management), ISO 50001 (energy management), Swiss climate award recipient
• Virtualisation: OpenStack-based IaaS. Standard APIs (Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Glance), compatible with standard python-openstackclient, Terraform, and Ansible OpenStack collections
• OS options: Ubuntu 20.04 / 22.04 / 24.04 LTS, Debian 11/12, Rocky Linux 9, Windows Server 2019/2022
• Networking: Dual-stack IPv4+IPv6, Security Groups (stateful firewall), Floating IPs, private networks (Neutron VLANs)
• Storage: NVMe SSD-backed volumes (Cinder), S3-compatible object storage

What Infomaniak is not: it is not a budget host that fights Contabo or Hetzner on raw price. It is a premium Swiss host. The higher price pays for jurisdiction, energy, and support quality. Expect to pay 20-40% more than a similar Hetzner instance. That trade-off only makes sense if the Swiss legal wrapper matters to your use case.

Pricing and specs analysis

Infomaniak Public Cloud uses OpenStack flavours, with on-demand and monthly billing. Here are prices as of mid-2026 (rough ranges - always check infomaniak.com):

*Unmetered within fair-use; egress bandwidth policy applies beyond high volumes.

For WireGuard self-hosting:

• 1-10 users: a1-ram2 is more than enough. WireGuard's kernel module uses very little CPU on a single core, even at a steady 500 Mbps.
• 10-50 users: pick a2-ram4 to keep headroom for any extra services on the same instance.
• The lowest spec for a WireGuard VPN server is 1 vCPU + 1 GB RAM. Infomaniak's smallest instance clears that with room to spare.

Quick comparison vs alternatives (we skip the full analysis here - see our Contabo vs Hetzner vs OVH comparison for the 12-criteria breakdown):

The Swiss premium is real: about 2× Hetzner for the smallest tier. You pay for the jurisdiction wrapper and the owned, renewable hardware.

Setup WireGuard on Infomaniak VPS - step-by-step

This guide uses Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Infomaniak image ubuntu-24.04), the OS we suggest for 2026 builds. WireGuard has shipped in the Linux mainline kernel since 5.6 (2020). Ubuntu 24.04 ships with kernel 6.8+, so you build no module.

Step 1 - Create the instance

Log in to Infomaniak Manager (manager.infomaniak.com), navigate to Cloud Manager > Compute > Instances, and click Create Instance.

• Choose flavour a1-ram2 (1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM) - sufficient for 10 users
• Select image: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
• Key pair: upload your SSH public key (Ed25519 recommended)
• Security Group: start with a new group (do not use default which blocks all inbound)

Step 2 - Configure the Security Group

In Network > Security Groups, edit your group and add the following rules:

Inbound  TCP  22   0.0.0.0/0   # SSH (restrict to your IP in production)
Inbound  UDP  51820  0.0.0.0/0  # WireGuard
Inbound  ICMP  -  0.0.0.0/0    # Ping for diagnostics
Outbound All  0.0.0.0/0         # Allow all outbound

Attach a Floating IP to the instance (Compute > Floating IPs > Allocate, then Associate).

Step 3 - Connect and harden SSH

ssh -i ~/.ssh/your_key ubuntu@<FLOATING_IP>

# Update system
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

# Disable password auth (already off on Infomaniak images, but confirm)
sudo sed -i 's/#PasswordAuthentication yes/PasswordAuthentication no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sudo systemctl reload ssh

Step 4 - Install WireGuard

WireGuard sits in the Ubuntu mainline kernel since 24.04. You only need to install the userspace tools:

sudo apt install -y wireguard wireguard-tools

Step 5 - Generate server keys

wg genkey | tee /etc/wireguard/server_private.key | wg pubkey > /etc/wireguard/server_public.key
sudo chmod 600 /etc/wireguard/server_private.key
SERVER_PRIV=$(cat /etc/wireguard/server_private.key)
SERVER_PUB=$(cat /etc/wireguard/server_public.key)
echo "Server public key: $SERVER_PUB"

Step 6 - Create the WireGuard config

sudo tee /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf <&lt; EOF
[Interface]
Address = 10.0.0.1/24, fd86:ea04::1/64
ListenPort = 51820
PrivateKey = ${SERVER_PRIV}
PostUp = iptables -A FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ens3 -j MASQUERADE; ip6tables -A FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; ip6tables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ens3 -j MASQUERADE
PostDown = iptables -D FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o ens3 -j MASQUERADE; ip6tables -D FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; ip6tables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o ens3 -j MASQUERADE
EOF

Note: swap ens3 for your real network interface name. Run ip link show to confirm it; Infomaniak usually uses ens3 on OpenStack instances.

Step 7 - Enable IP forwarding and start WireGuard

# Enable IP forwarding permanently
echo "net.ipv4.ip_forward=1" | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
echo "net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1" | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
sudo sysctl -p

# Enable and start WireGuard
sudo systemctl enable wg-quick@wg0
sudo systemctl start wg-quick@wg0
sudo wg show

Step 8 - Add a peer (client)

On the client machine, generate keys:

wg genkey | tee client1_private.key | wg pubkey > client1_public.key

On the server, append to /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf:

sudo tee -a /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf <&lt; EOF

[Peer]
# Client 1
PublicKey = <CLIENT1_PUBLIC_KEY>
AllowedIPs = 10.0.0.2/32, fd86:ea04::2/128
EOF

sudo systemctl restart wg-quick@wg0

Client config (client1.conf):

[Interface]
Address = 10.0.0.2/24, fd86:ea04::2/64
PrivateKey = <CLIENT1_PRIVATE_KEY>
DNS = 1.1.1.1

[Peer]
PublicKey = <SERVER_PUBLIC_KEY>
Endpoint = <FLOATING_IP>:51820
AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
PersistentKeepalive = 25

For a deeper dive into WireGuard protocol internals vs OpenVPN, see our OpenVPN vs WireGuard deep-dive.

Performance: what to expect and how to verify it

Speed here comes straight from the instance tier and your location, not from any private benchmark we run:

• CPU is usually the ceiling, not the network. On a 1 vCPU a1-ram2 instance, the single core caps WireGuard throughput before the link does. A bigger instance (a2-ram4) lifts that ceiling. Move up if you serve many clients at once.
• Latency tracks physical distance. Geneva sits close to Western European hubs, so the round-trip from cities like Paris is low. It grows with distance (Berlin, then Madrid). Next to a Frankfurt region (e.g. Hetzner), Geneva can be a touch closer or farther, based on your exact route.
• NVMe-backed volumes remove any I/O bottleneck if you log connections or run extra services.

Don't trust a published number. To get figures for your link, run the repeatable iperf3 steps from our WireGuard vs OpenVPN benchmark guide against your own instance. Then watch wg show peer transfer rates to confirm you're not hitting the single-core ceiling.

Trade-offs vs other privacy-friendly providers

Not all privacy use cases point to Switzerland. Here is an honest breakdown:

When to choose Infomaniak:

• Your threat model includes European law enforcement MLAT requests
• You need proof of green energy sourcing (ESG compliance)
• You need an OpenStack-standard API for Terraform/Ansible automation
• You want a vendor with direct support in French, German, and English

When Hetzner is sufficient:

• Standard business privacy, no elevated threat model
• Budget-constrained (half the price for more raw specs)
• German/EU jurisdiction is acceptable for your use case

When to look elsewhere:

• For a complete 12-criteria side-by-side of Contabo, Hetzner, and OVH, see our dedicated comparison. Infomaniak is a different positioning tier - complementary to that benchmark, not a replacement.

Need a cheap second VPS in the EU (say, a relay node)? Amen VPS offers low-cost French-jurisdiction instances worth a look as a complement.

Decision matrix

Five profiles, one recommendation each - Infomaniak is the right answer for three of them.

Bottom line for self-hosted VPN on Infomaniak:

If Swiss jurisdiction matters to your use case, Infomaniak Public Cloud stands out. It is the only major Western European host that pairs all of these: its own Geneva data centres, 100% renewable energy with certifications, OpenStack standard APIs, and a documented privacy track record. It costs about 2× Hetzner. That premium is fully justified for the journalist, the regulated-industry team, or the privacy-focused family that wants a provable data sovereignty stack.

For a price-sensitive user where Germany or France is an acceptable jurisdiction, Hetzner or Contabo stay the better value. That is not a knock on Infomaniak. It is a different product for a different use case.

Also see our core guide on best self-hosted VPN solutions in 2026 and our GDPR-first cloud hosting alternatives to AWS for the wider privacy cloud picture.