Bring your own IP
Contabo BYOIP: using your own IP addresses at Contabo
Contabo publishes nothing about bringing your own IP addresses. On 15 October 2026 its help center, product pages and terms, in English and German, covered only Contabo's own addresses, and a search of its help center for BGP or BYOIP found no articles. Its help article on extra addresses says every VPS and VDS "comes with a static public IPv4 address included at no extra cost". It caps additional IPv4 addresses at one for a VPS, 15 for a VDS (now sold as Max Performance VPS) and 25 for a dedicated server. VPS and VDS customers order them in the Customer Panel at €3.50 a month before tax. Dedicated server customers ask support.
The tunnel route
A network that can announce the block does so, and a GRE or WireGuard tunnel carries its traffic to your Contabo server and back (how the tunnel works). The server keeps the IPv4 address Contabo assigned to it, and that address is the outer end of the tunnel. The leased block arrives inside the tunnel. You configure its addresses on the tunnel or loopback interface, and the server answers on them as if they were local. Contabo's network sees only traffic between two public addresses.
- Replies go back through the tunnel. Add a policy route so that traffic from the block leaves through the tunnel. Sent straight out, it would carry a source address Contabo never assigned to the server, and networks filter such traffic.
- Mind Contabo's firewall. Contabo restricts no ports by default. Its optional firewall, for VPS and VDS only, is inactive until you assign a server to it. Once assigned, it drops all inbound traffic that no rule accepts, and its help article lists TCP, UDP and ICMP as the protocols for a rule. WireGuard fits that: allow its UDP port from the far end. GRE is IP protocol 47 and not on that list, so for GRE ask Contabo first, or leave the server unassigned and filter on the server itself. Dedicated servers have no Contabo firewall, so open the tunnel in the OS firewall.
- Set the MTU. 1,476 bytes for GRE, around 1,420 for WireGuard, with MSS clamping if the server routes the block on to virtual machines.
- Any size. A tunnel delivers fewer than 256 addresses, down to a single one, which BYOIP never does.
Where RTM Networks fits
We lease /24s and larger from our own RIPE NCC address space, and sell blocks in the RIPE NCC, ARIN and APNIC regions. Every lease includes the ROA, the route object, PTR records and a Letter of Authorization whenever you need one (lease IPv4). If Contabo agrees to announce a block, we create the ROA for the ASN it names and sign the letter of authorization. Until then, we announce the block ourselves and deliver it to your Contabo server over GRE or WireGuard, in any size down to a single address (GRE and WireGuard tunnels). That also covers a VPS that needs more than the one extra address Contabo sells for it. Other providers: BYOIP guides.
Contact
Bringing your own IP to Contabo?
Tell us where your server runs and how many addresses you need. We announce a block and deliver it to your server over GRE or WireGuard, in any size, and lease or sell /24s and larger for when your provider takes them. We usually reply in 1-3 business hours.
