Hostinger’s 30-day money-back guarantee covers most hosting and email services paid by any method other than cryptocurrency, and the 30 days count from the original purchase date rather than from when you first log in. The request is made inside the panel from the profile icon, then Billing, then Payment History, where an eligible payment carries a Refund button. If the button is not there, the payment falls outside the policy. The walkthrough below follows the published policy checked 10 November 2026, including the exclusions that surprise people.
What the 30 days covers, and what it does not
The guarantee is broader than a simple “new purchase” rule and narrower than “everything”. Hosting renewals are inside it, which is unusual, but domains and add-ons are outside it, which is where most disputes start. Read both columns, and Hostinger’s refund policy itself, before you buy rather than after.
| Inside the 30-day guarantee | Outside it |
|---|---|
| New purchases of web, cloud, Agency, KVM VPS and Game Panel hosting | Domain renewals and completed domain transfers |
| Renewals of web, cloud, Agency, KVM VPS and Game Panel hosting | Domain redemption fees and domain privacy protection |
| New purchases and renewals of Hostinger Email and Titan Email | Google Workspace Email and the Hostinger Email Storage add-on |
| Upgrades of Hostinger Email and Titan Email | VPS Control Panel licences |
| Upgrades of web, cloud and Agency plans | Upgrades for KVM VPS and Game Panel |
| Any payment method except cryptocurrency | Paid Boost for Cloud Hosting, Hostinger GPU, LLM and AI credits of any type |
| The first payment after a free trial | |
| Most country-code TLD registrations, and anything paid in crypto | |
| Services suspended or cancelled for abuse |
Two rows deserve a second look. The VPS upgrade exclusion is the one that catches people who read “KVM VPS is covered” and stop there: the purchase and the renewal are covered, the upgrade is not. And the country-code domain exclusion means a .co.uk or similar bought alongside the hosting is not coming back, so treat the domain as a separate transaction from day one.
Check the plan before you rely on the guarantee: see the Hostinger hosting plans and terms — Premium is $1.99/mo on a 48-month term ($95.52 up front, renews at $10.99/mo), and that $95.52 is the amount a 30-day refund would return.
The request, click by click
The refund is self-service while the payment is eligible. There is no form to email and no reason to open a ticket first, and doing so adds a queue rather than a result.
- Sign in at hpanel.hostinger.com.
- Click the profile icon in the top right corner.
- Open Billing, then Payment History. The list shows payment IDs from the last 30 days.
- Find the payment for the service you are cancelling, and check that a Refund button appears on that row.
- Click Refund and choose where the money goes: Hostinger Balance or the original payment method.
- Confirm the request. Track it afterwards in Refund History.
Step 4 is the whole answer to “can I get a refund”. The button is not a generic control that appears on every row; it appears on payments the policy considers eligible. If the payment is 31 days old, or it was a domain renewal, or it was a VPS upgrade, there is nothing to click, and no amount of support escalation changes the policy.
Hostinger Balance or the original payment method
Balance is faster and stays inside the account. The original payment method puts the money back where it came from and takes longer. Neither is reversible once chosen, so decide before clicking.
There is a rule attached to balance that does not apply to the original method: a refund to balance is allowed once every 12 months per invoice. If you have already taken a balance refund on that invoice within the last year, the balance route is closed and the original payment method is the remaining option. For a first refund, this rarely bites. For someone who buys, refunds and rebuys the same plan to chase a promo price, it is the rule that ends the cycle.
Removing the original payment method does not block the refund. If the card has expired or been cancelled, the refund is still issued against it, so contact the bank if the money does not appear rather than expecting the request to fail.
Before you click: the request deletes the service
This is the part that has no undo. Requesting a refund cancels the service immediately, and files, databases and email are deleted permanently. It is not a cancellation scheduled for the end of the term, and it is not a pause. The clock stops when you submit, not when the money arrives.
So export first. Download a full backup of the site files and database and keep it somewhere that is not the account you are about to close. Export the mailbox contents you need, because mailboxes do not travel with a website backup. Note the DNS records you set by hand, since the zone goes with the plan. Then submit the refund.
AI Builder sites need a different routine. Backups cannot be downloaded the same way as a standard file set, so copy the text, images and product listings out manually before you start the request. If you built the site with the AI Builder and never connected your own domain, that content exists only inside the account you are closing.
How long the money takes
The refund is issued within 48 hours of the request. That is the decision, not the arrival: after it is issued, the money takes 2 to 15 business days to land, depending on the method. Business days are Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays.
| Stage | Time |
|---|---|
| Refund issued after the request | Within 48 hours |
| Arrival, PayPal | 2 to 3 business days |
| Arrival, PIX | 2 to 3 business days |
| Arrival, credit or debit card | 5 to 15 business days |
| Arrival, other methods | 5 to 15 business days |
Do not read the 48 hours as a promise that the money is in your account by Thursday. Read it as the deadline for Hostinger’s side of the transaction; the rest is the payment network’s timetable, and a card refund that takes 12 business days is inside the published window rather than late. Check Refund History before contacting support, since it records the issue date you can quote.
When the Refund button is missing
The first explanation is almost always the right one: that payment is not eligible. Work through the exclusions list in order, because the answer is visible on the invoice description. A domain renewal, a completed transfer, a VPS upgrade, an AI credit pack or a payment older than 30 days all produce the same result, an empty space where the button should be.
| Situation | What is happening |
|---|---|
| No Refund button on a hosting purchase inside 30 days | Check the payment is not a KVM VPS or Game Panel upgrade, and that it was not paid in crypto |
| Payment is older than 30 days | Outside the window, counted from the original purchase date |
| The row is a domain | Domain renewals, transfers, redemption fees and privacy protection are excluded |
| The row is an add-on | Email Storage, Paid Boost, GPU and AI credits are excluded |
| The row is the first payment after a free trial | Excluded by the policy |
| The account was suspended for abuse | Excluded by the policy |
If none of those apply and the button is still absent, contact support with the payment ID, the date, the service name and a screenshot of the Payment History row. That is a specific enough ticket to get a specific answer. What support will not do is override the published exclusions, so a request framed as “I did not read the terms” gets a policy quote rather than a refund. The status page is worth a glance if the billing area is behaving oddly, since a platform incident can hide or delay panel actions.
Deciding whether to keep the plan instead: compare the Hostinger plans once more — Business is $2.79/mo on a 48-month term with 50 GB NVMe, daily backups and unlimited websites, and if that is the tier you actually needed, upgrading is cheaper than starting over with a new 48-month term.
Frequently asked questions
Is the 30 days from purchase or from activation?
From the original purchase date. Buying a plan and activating the site three weeks later does not extend the window, and a renewal is counted from the renewal payment date rather than the original order. If you are close to the boundary, submit the request on the day you decide rather than waiting for the weekend to pass.
Can I get a refund on a renewal?
Yes for web, cloud, Agency, KVM VPS and Game Panel hosting renewals, and for Hostinger Email and Titan Email renewals, provided the payment is inside 30 days and not made in crypto. Domain renewals are the common exception people trip over, because a domain invoice often arrives in the same billing period as the hosting renewal.
Can I refund and then buy the plan again cheaper?
The policy allows it on paper, but a refund to balance is limited to once every 12 months per invoice, so the manoeuvre only works once. The service is also cancelled and its data deleted at the moment of the request, which means rebuilding from a backup. For most people the saving is smaller than the afternoon it costs.
What happens to my website after the refund?
It is deleted. Files, databases and email are removed permanently when the request is submitted, not at the end of the billing term. A backup taken before the request is the only copy you will have, and for AI Builder sites the content has to be copied out manually because it cannot be downloaded the same way.
Does the refund go back to my card automatically?
Only if you choose the original payment method. The alternative is Hostinger Balance, which is credited to the account and is faster but keeps the money with Hostinger. Choosing balance also consumes the once-per-12-months allowance for that invoice, so the original method is the better choice if you are leaving for good.
Can I cancel without asking for a refund?
Yes, and the two are separate decisions. Cancelling stops the renewal; a refund reverses a payment already made. If the payment is outside the 30-day window, cancelling is what you have, and it should be done before the next renewal date so the charge does not happen. The plan review explains what each tier includes if you are weighing a downgrade instead of an exit.
The policy is short enough to read in full once, and doing that before you buy is cheaper than learning it from a missing button. Take the backup first, submit the request while the payment is inside 30 days, and choose the original payment method unless you plan to spend the balance on another Hostinger service.
