Cloudboxes.io Review 2026: GPU Transcoding Plans and Prices

Cloudboxes.io at a Glance

Prices & specs last verified: August 2026 · Scored per our review methodology.

The One Thing That Makes Cloudboxes Different

Nearly every shared seedbox on the market gives you CPU and disk. Cloudboxes gives you a GPU, with hardware transcoding switched on out of the box on its GPU line. That is unusual enough to be the entire reason to consider them.

It matters if you run Plex, Emby or Jellyfin from your box. When a client cannot play a file natively — a 4K HEVC remux to a phone, say — the server has to re-encode it on the fly. On a CPU-only shared seedbox that is slow, and it is the single most common cause of “my Plex keeps buffering” on a box whose network is perfectly fine. A GPU does that work in dedicated silicon instead.

In our own reading of two years of r/seedboxes discussion, roughly half of the people shopping for a seedbox mention Plex. Very few hosts answer the transcoding half of that question at all.

You do not need it if your media direct-plays. If you watch on a decent TV app or an Apple TV/Shield and your files are already in a format those devices handle, nothing transcodes and the GPU sits idle. Buy this for a household with mixed devices, remote users, or a library full of 4K HEVC — not on principle.

GPU Plans (verified August 2026)

All four run 2×10 Gbit with GPU transcoding enabled. A dedicated IP is an optional €5/month.

NVMe Hybrid Plans

The hybrid line is the one to read carefully. NSmall costs €10 more than GPU Small and gives you half the SAS storage — you are buying NVMe capacity and IO, not space. If transcoding is why you came, the GPU line is better value until you reach NLarge, where the GPU and dedicated IP are bundled in.

Read the Bandwidth Line Twice

Cloudboxes advertises “Unlimited Bandwidth” in its feature list, and every plan then states an allowance — “4 TB Bandwidth then 100mbit”.

Both are true, and the distinction matters. You are never cut off and never billed for overage, which is what “unlimited” is doing there. But once you pass the allowance you are throttled to 100 Mbit on a 20 Gbit box — a 200× reduction — until the period resets. On GPU Small that ceiling arrives after 4 TB, which a serious seeder can move in a week.

This is the same shape as Pulsed Media’s traffic model, and it is a far more honest arrangement than a surprise invoice. Just size the plan on the allowance, not on the word “unlimited”.

Storage Is RAID0 — There Is No Redundancy

Every plan lists “Raid 0 SAS Disk Space”. RAID0 stripes data across disks for speed and provides no protection at all: one failed disk loses the array. That is normal for this market — our own disclosed partners run RAID0 too — but it means a seedbox is not a backup, and anything you cannot re-download should live somewhere else as well. Our guide to seedboxes with RAID and redundancy covers how to check what a host is actually running before you buy.

What They Publish That Most Hosts Don’t

A Geekbench score per plan. 15,349 on the small boxes, 34,599 on the medium, 46,814 on the largest. Published per-plan benchmarks are rare, and they give the “non-overbooked servers” claim something to stand on.

Honest storage units. Their pricing page spells out that 1 TiB is 1,024 GB and points out that a competitor advertising “2000GB” is really selling 1.8 TiB. Quoting storage in the unit you actually receive is a small thing that correlates well with straight dealing elsewhere.

Eight transit providers. NTT, Cogent, Seabone, GTT, Zayo, Level3, Core-backbone and LG, with user-selectable re-routing and a web MTR tool. If you have ever had a seedbox that was fast for everyone except you, that is a routing problem, and this is the rare host that hands you the controls.

A real trial. 24 hours for €0.30 with the code IWANTATRIAL (€0.60 on the hybrid line). Most of this market offers a refund and hopes you will not ask. Paying 30 cents to test whether a box is overbooked before committing €19.95/month is the single most useful thing on their site.

Where It Falls Short

The entry price is high for the disk you get. €19.95 for 2 TiB is roughly triple what the budget end of this market charges per terabyte. You are paying for the GPU, the 20 Gbit network and the transit choice. If you do not need those, you are overpaying.

Parts of the 80-app catalogue have aged out. The list still offers CouchPotato, whose repository was archived in 2021, and Readarr, archived by its maintainers in 2025. Shell access is advertised as Ubuntu 20.04, whose standard support ended in April 2025. In fairness this drift is endemic — we found the same stale entries when we audited our own disclosed partners’ catalogues — but check that the specific app you are buying for is a current build.

Support is ticket-only and we have no measured response times for it, so we make no claim either way.

Verdict: 7.5/10

A specialist host that knows exactly what it is. If you run Plex or Jellyfin for a household of mixed devices and transcoding is your bottleneck, Cloudboxes solves a problem most seedbox providers do not even acknowledge, and it backs the claim with published benchmarks, a routing tool and a trial you can buy for pocket change.

If you mostly seed, direct-play your media, or are shopping on price per terabyte, it is the wrong tool and an expensive one. Start with our best seedbox roundup or the best seedboxes for Plex instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Cloudboxes.io really have unlimited bandwidth?

Not in the plain sense. Each plan carries an allowance of 4 TB to 80 TB; after that your speed is throttled to 100 Mbit until the period resets. You are never disconnected and never billed for overage, which is what their “unlimited” refers to.

What does the GPU actually do on a seedbox?

It handles hardware video transcoding for Plex, Emby and Jellyfin, so a file a client cannot play natively gets re-encoded on the fly without saturating the CPU. It does nothing for torrent speeds.

Is Cloudboxes.io storage redundant?

No. Every plan runs RAID0, which stripes for speed and offers no protection — a single disk failure loses the array. Keep a copy of anything irreplaceable elsewhere.

Can I try Cloudboxes before committing?

Yes. The promotion code IWANTATRIAL buys a 24-hour trial for €0.30 (€0.60 on the NVMe hybrid plans). There is also a 7-day refund policy.