How Can I View My CPU Usage in cPanel?

Learn About cPanel CPU Usage

When managing your account, you will need to learn how to view your CPU usage in cPanel. Knowing this information will help you understand how your server is performing so you can make changes if necessary. This ensures your online presence runs smoothly at all times.

For example, if you notice a spike in usage while running a specific cron job, it may indicate issues with its code. In this guide, we’ll explain what resource usage is and then explain how to view CPU usage in cPanel.

What is Resource Usage?

When your account requests the server to perform tasks, such as connecting to a database, running a PHP script, or sending email, it requires resources from the server’s CPUs (Central Processing Units), as well as disk access from the hard drive to complete the tasks.

CPU resources are limited, as there is only a set number of processors per server. Depending on the level of hosting you have, you have a different cPanel CPU usage allotment that you don’t want to exceed.

Exceeding the CPU limits assigned to your hosting level may result in an email warning or a temporary account suspension if usage is severe enough. Being knowledgeable about the resource usage limits your account has and how much it is currently using is important.

Shared Hosting

Since shared hosting is generally the entry-level option, those CPUs are shared among all users on the same server.

In a shared hosting environment, it’s very important that no one overutilizes the CPU, as this could delay or even miss other users’ requests.

If you are near or over your account’s CPU limit, we strongly encourage you to take a look at our account suspensions article, which goes in depth on what commonly causes high resource usage.

VPS Hosting

Virtual server hosting is a step up from shared hosting, but you are still sharing the same CPUs as other VPS clients on that physical node.

On a VPS, your maximum load average should be 1.00 in short bursts. However, ideally, your load should remain below 0.7 for most of the day.

Dedicated Hosting

With dedicated servers being the top tier of hosting, you have full access to all of the CPU cores on your server.

On a dedicated server, ideally, you want to keep the load average below the number of CPU cores (and threads) you have. However, since it’s your own server, we won’t step in if your CPU usage is spiking, since you wouldn’t be affecting any other users.

Dedicated server CPU cores

Server ClassCPU cores (threads)
Aspire4C/8T
Essential4C/8T
Advanced6C/12T
Elite8C/16T
Extreme16C/32T
CC-100012C/24T
CC-200024C/48T
CC-300032C/64T
CC-400064C/128T

Now that you know what CPU Usage is, you may wonder where you can view a cPanel account’s resource usage. This next section will walk you through the steps.

View CPU Usage in cPanel

To view your CPU usage in cPanel, follow the steps below:

  1. Log in to cPanel.
  2. For a quick view, in the right-hand sidebar, scroll until you see CPU Usage.
    quick view CPU usage in cPanel
  3. For more information, scroll down to the Metrics section and click on Resource usage to view data on resources your account is using.
    View CPU usage in cPanel

    Viewing CPU dashboard in cPanel

With both VPS and dedicated server hosting, you can SSH directly into the server to find out your usage. If you’re on either platform, you can read our guide on advanced server load monitoring to determine your resource usage levels from the terminal.

For both VPS and dedicated servers, we also have a large collection of articles on resolving server usage issues that can help you pinpoint what’s causing high usage.

If you still need further assistance, contact our support department directly.

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27 thoughts on “How Can I View My CPU Usage in cPanel?

  1. Hi,

    My server is 4.05, 3.84, 3.65 this is average load taken my server… Please tell me this is ok or not…

    I want to know the server maximum and low average load…

  2. Good morning,

    Thank you for your feedback. My name is Tim S, the Customer Community Manager with InMotion Hosting. I understand your frustrations. Considering this is a public forum, I’m not comfortable discussing your account specifics here. I’m happy to take this conversation offline and discuss this further with you. Let me know if this is something you would like to do. We appreciate your feedback.

    Thanks!

    Tim S
    Customer Community Manager

  3. Hi,

    There used to be an icon on the cpanel on each child account (reseller), which showed graphs for resource usage in the last 24hours, last 4 hours, last our, last 30 minutes, etc.

    I cannot seem to find this icon now. Is there any way to monitor resource usage on child accounts now?

    Best,

    Nenko

    1. Are you able to access the Server Status section of WHM? That is likely going to be the best option for you.

  4. I ALWAYS GET RESOURCE  LIMIT EMAILS

     

    193 Other WebSites On This Server

    THIS MEAN SERVER WHICH WE HAVE HOST IS OVER LOADED?

     

    1. Hello UMAR,

      Thank you for contacting us. Our System Administrators do not send these email notifications out unless necessary. Since many people successfully run their websites in a shared setting without issue, it is possible your website is not appropriate for a shared environment.

      This is just a public forum, and I cannot provide account specific information here. So, I recommend replying to the email notifications, and requesting additional information. This will open a ticket with our System Administration team, and allow them to provide you with more specific details into the resources you are using.

      Thank you,
      John-Paul

    1. Hello Peter,

      Apologies for the link issues. The article has been unpublished due to changes in the system. I will make sure to remove the link. If you have any further questions or comments, please let us know.

      Regards,
      Arnel C.

  5. I am planning to install a php script that will index my entire website.  We don’t change pages very often, to the monthly CPU usage should be minor, but the first time it is run, I expect trouble.

    Is there anything I should do to avoid issues?

    galiziengermandescendants.org

    1. Hello John,

      You should be fine for the most part when indexing your website but we generally send out a warning email prior to suspending the account. To take a preemptive action you could email [email protected] and inform our support department that you are doing something on your account and it may be resource intensive.

      Best Regards,
      TJ Edens

  6. I dont understand what you are saying. I only upload photos etc to my website. How can I have high resource issues ? Nobody can comment etc. Only me can upload / update etc.

     

    1. Hello Zet,

      Thank you for contacting us. High resource usage can be caused by many things. Such as a poorly coded plugin/script, bots intensely crawling your site, or even high traffic to a specific page.

      Since this is just our public forum, we cannot provide account specific information. I recommend replying to the email you received, asking for additional information. This will allow them to review your specific account and determine the cause.

      Thank you,
      John-Paul

    1. Hello Umar,

      I reviewed your account and you are getting emails that specify that you’re having high resource issues on your account. The best way to address them is to review the emails that were included in your email notices. Specifically, make sure to review the What is high system resource usage? The list of articles in that tutorial gives you many ways to troubleshoot your website’s usage of resources and determine what’s happening. The articles also provide possible solutions to your usage issues. Please make sure to read those articles. Additionally, if you would like the technical support team to review your account, then please respond to the email that was sent so that your request can be processed.

      Kindest regards,
      Arnel C.

    2. The information in the article is a good starting point. We are a small church using volunteer web keepers with limited working skills. As a result of your recent e-mail we will attempt to over-come our problem with accounts resource management. Any help you can give us will be greatly appreciated.

  7. I am using wordpress as well but the website is not live yet. Would I have to uninstall the plugins? to lower my usage levels?

    1. Hello Ana,

      You should reply to the email stating you are using too many server resources. Doing this our systems administration team will investigate your website and provide steps to lower your usage.

      Kindest Regards,
      TJ Edens

  8. Hi

    I received a email saying I had high resource usage coming from my account. I read the articles but I am still un sure of what steps I have to take to prevent this from happening again. 

     

    -Ana

    1. Hello Ana,

      The steps you need to take will depend on what is causing your high resource usage. One of the most common things to do to help is to use caching on your site. WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop, and other programs have either plugins or caching settings you can enable to assist with this.

      Kindest Regards,
      Scott M

  9. Sorry – I’m not sure what you’re saying. I haven’t used my account lately. I’m thinking of adding something, but haven’t in the last few months. I don’t know many of these things you mention.

    1. Hello Jane,

      I sorry that you feel confused after reading the article. When a program runs on a computer, it takes up resources like memory, hard drive space, central processing unit time and processing power. This is the same for the server that runs a website. This article explains that usage and how to see it based on your account type. These resources are NOT unlimited and will vary based on your account type. Therefore, it is very important to understand how your website consumes these resources so that you can plan necessary actions such as optimizing your website (reducing its memory consumption and making it run faster) or planning for a server upgrade.

      If you are still confused, you may want to contact our live technical support team if you require further help. Please let us know specifically what is causing your confusion and we would be happy to help.

      Regards,
      Arnel C.

    2. Hello del,

      I apologize if this guide wasn’t clear, maybe it needs to be updated to make relevant information a bit more accessible. If you look under the Shared Hosting section which is the type of hosting your account has you should see a link for view your resource usage with CPU graphs.

      Taking a look at your CPU usage in cPanel, you can see that you had a significant spike on 6/17 and then another smaller spike on 7/2. It looks like today so far you’ve used roughly 55% so could possibly be trending towards another high usage day if that usage trend continues.

      Taking a look at your access logs, it appears that you had one IP address from Russia that had these requests to your site in the span of just 18 minutes:

      901 POST /administrator/index.php
      1009 GET /administrator/index.php

      I have gone ahead and blocked this IP address for you using my block unwanted users with .htaccess guide.

      You might want to password protect a directory in cPanel to setup a secondary password on your /administrator directory. That way only you can even attempt to actually log in because their has been an increase in Joomla brute force attacks.

      It also appears that you’re running an older insecure version of Joomla, so you might want to also upgrade Joomla 1.5 to 2.5 to help make sure that if your site is attempting to be exploited that it isn’t successful.

      Please let us know if you had any other questions at all!

      – Jacob

  10. we read your article. we ill come to the conclusion by this month end… until then pl cooperate with us. we are sorry for your inconvenience may cause.

    Thank you.

    1. Hello Sudarshan,

      Thank you for contacting us. If you are attempting to contact Live Support directly, you can reply to the email that was sent, or see our additional contact information.

      If you have any further questions, feel free to post them below.
      Thank you,

      -John-Paul

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