Equinix Colocation vs Equinix Metal
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Equinix Colocation and Equinix Metal.
Quick Verdict
4.0/5
Equinix Colocation
0 reviews
1.5/5
Equinix Metal
0 reviews
Equinix Colocation is rated higher (4.0 vs 1.5). Equinix is the world's largest colocation provider with 270+ International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers globally (investor materials cite ~280 across 77 metros in 36 countries). Direct cloud on-ramps to AWS, Azure, GCP, and private network peering. Equinix Metal (formerly Packet) offered on-demand bare metal servers across Equinix metros with ARM and x86 hardware, hourly billing and private interconnects to cloud providers. Equinix stopped commercial sales and sunset the service on 30 June 2026 — it can no longer be purchased or used.
Equinix Colocation World's largest colocation network — 270+ data centers | Equinix Metal Discontinued: on-demand bare metal (formerly Packet), sunset 30 June 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.0 (0 reviews)✓ | 1.5 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | paid | paid |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | Enterprises whose infrastructure strategy depends on interconnection — financial services, networks, content platforms and multi-cloud architectures needing private on-ramps and a consistent global footprint of cabinets and cross-connects. | Nobody — the service was sunset on 30 June 2026. Former Metal workloads belong on a modern bare metal provider from our /category/bare-metal-cloud shortlist, or on Equinix colocation if interconnection was the real dependency. |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Tags | ||
| Tags | eu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterprivate networking | hourly billingipv6ddos protectioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessprivate networking |
| Visit Equinix Colocation → | Visit Equinix Metal → | |
Equinix Colocation
Pros
- + Unmatched interconnection density: 507,000+ interconnections, 2,000+ networks, direct cloud on-ramps
- + Published facility engineering: 99.999% stated uptime, N+1 power minimum, 24/7 on-site security
- + Global consistency — 270+ IBX locations across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific
- + Facility-level detail (seismic ratings, power architecture, certifications) is public, not deck-only
- + Mature operational services: remote hands, cross-connect provisioning, staging and shipping
- + 96% renewable energy across global operations, reported by a listed company (Nasdaq: EQIX)
Cons
- - No public pricing — sales-led, multi-year contracts; premium pricing in every metro
- - No self-service or hourly entry point; unsuitable for small deployments
- - Cross-connects, remote hands and expansion reservations add materially to the headline cost
- - Physical and contractual lock-in once cabling and cross-connects are established
- - Portfolio complexity (Fabric, Network Edge, Metal, xScale) blurs what is included in a colo contract
Equinix Metal
Pros
- + Historically one of the strongest developer surfaces in bare metal: API, CLI, Terraform, Kubernetes integrations
- + Hourly on-demand billing (minimum one-hour block) with 5-50% reservation discounts by term
- + Single-tenant hardware with real interconnection: Equinix Fabric links and cloud on-ramps
- + ARM and x86 options, NVMe storage, up to 64-core EPYC-class machines
- + Shutdown was handled professionally: dated timeline, migration support, security and stability maintained to the end
Cons
- - Discontinued: sales stopped and the service was sunset on 30 June 2026 — unpicked workloads were deleted
- - Premium pricing (~$535/mo entry per third-party trackers) in a market with far cheaper bare metal automation
- - Classic vendor-concentration risk: a side product inside a colocation giant, killed by portfolio arithmetic
- - Residual resources (IPs, VLANs, VRFs, Fabric connections, dedicated ports) kept billing unless explicitly deleted
- - No free tier, no published SLA; enterprise sales-led motions for credits and reservations
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