MikroTik CHR: RouterOS in the cloud, live in 5 minutes

There is one flat plan: 20 EUR per month, and the monthly price drops to 17 EUR when you pay for a 12-month billing period. The price already includes everything the router needs to run: a 1 Gbps network port, 3 TB of traffic per month, snapshots and monitoring, so there are no separate line items to add at checkout. The only extra cost worth planning for is a paid RouterOS licence from MikroTik if you need production throughput, since the included free licence is limited to 1 Mbit/s. Prices are shown without VAT; 21% VAT is added at checkout.

CHR stands for Cloud Hosted Router: it is the full RouterOS operating system packaged to run as a virtual machine instead of on MikroTik hardware. Feature-wise nothing is stripped out, so BGP, OSPF, IPSec and the rest of the RouterOS toolset behave exactly as they do on a physical device. Running it in our data centre in Riga or Naaldwijk means you skip buying, racking and powering a box: the router lives in a professional data centre environment and is online in about 5 minutes after ordering. A typical use case is a central VPN hub or routing point that your offices, branches and servers connect to.

Technically yes: a CHR is a private virtual server (VPS) that boots RouterOS instead of a general-purpose Linux distribution. You get your own instance with dedicated resources that we never oversell, plus a public IP address, so it behaves like a real standalone router on the internet rather than a shared appliance. The practical difference shows in how you work with it: instead of a shell and packages you manage the whole system through WinBox, WebFig, SSH or the API, the way you would manage any other MikroTik. If you already run RouterOS hardware, nothing about the day-to-day administration will feel new.

Every CHR we deploy comes with the free RouterOS licence already active, so you can log in and start configuring immediately. The free level caps each interface at 1 Mbit/s. That is enough to build and test a configuration, check firewall rules or stage a setup before go-live, but it is not meant for carrying real traffic. When you are ready for production, the usual choice is a P1 licence from MikroTik: 45 USD one-time, allowing up to 1 Gbit/s. Applying it does not require redeploying the router: the licence unlocks throughput on the same instance, and the plan's 1 Gbps port stays the same throughout.

Yes, and this is the intended model: CHR licences are bought directly from MikroTik or an authorised distributor and paid to them, not to us. Three paid levels exist: P1 at 45 USD for routing up to 1 Gbit/s, P10 at 95 USD for higher aggregate throughput, and P-Unlimited at 250 USD with no speed cap at all. Each is a one-time purchase that binds to the system ID of your CHR, so it survives reboots and RouterOS upgrades without any renewal. For a single router on a 1 Gbps port, P1 covers most cases; write to support if you are unsure which level fits your setup.

Yes. BGP is part of RouterOS and works on CHR without any restriction from our side, so you can build sessions to your own routers over tunnels or run a routing lab straight away. Because we operate our own network, AS58269, we can also bring you in as a real peer: if you hold your own PI address space and want to announce it to the internet through us, write to support and we will set up a BGP session and agree the technical details with you. This makes a CHR usable not only as a VPN hub but as a proper edge router for your own address space.

Yes. Export the configuration from any RouterOS device, hardware or virtual, and import it on the CHR over WinBox, SSH or the API, whichever you normally use. One practical note: check interface names and addresses before applying, because a config written for a hardware router with many physical ports will reference interfaces your cloud instance does not have. Before any import we take a snapshot of the instance, so if the new config locks you out or breaks routing, rolling back to the previous working state is one click rather than a rebuild. That makes CHR a low-risk way to move an existing MikroTik setup into the cloud.

Nothing is switched off and the port is not throttled: your router keeps running at full speed. When usage goes past the 3 TB monthly allowance we get in touch and discuss moving you to a larger traffic bundle, so the outcome is a conversation, not an automatic penalty. In practice most CHR workloads, VPN concentrators and site-to-site routing among them, stay well below 3 TB per month, so the limit rarely comes up. If you expect sustained heavy transfer, mention it to support in advance and we will suggest a suitable bundle. You can also watch your own usage anytime in RouterOS interface statistics.

Decide by where the people and systems that will use the router actually sit. Riga (RIX1) is our home site, a Tier 3+ data centre on our own network, and gives the lowest latency to Latvia and the Baltic region. Naaldwijk (NL1) sits closer to Western European traffic, which helps when most of your offices or users are in that part of Europe. Both locations are under EU jurisdiction and cost the same, from 17 EUR per month, so the choice is purely about geography. If you need a presence in the Middle East, a Dubai location is coming on request: ask support about it.