Hetzner
PaidAffordable European cloud hosting
About Hetzner
Hetzner is the European VPS provider that the self-hosting and indie-hacker community recommends when cost is the primary constraint. Based in Germany with data centers in Nuremberg, Falkenstein, Helsinki, and (since 2023) Ashburn, Virginia. The pricing is the main draw: a CX22 (2 vCPU AMD, 4GB RAM) runs around €4.55/month. Comparable instances on DigitalOcean or AWS cost 2-3x more. The CAX11 ARM64 instance (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM) is even cheaper at around €3.79/month and benchmarks well for CPU-bound workloads. Dedicated servers start at €39/month. Block storage runs €0.0476/GB/month. Object storage (S3-compatible) is available at €0.0119/GB/month. The Hetzner Cloud console is clean and functional. The API and Terraform provider are well-maintained. Hacker News periodically surfaces threads praising Hetzner for running serious production workloads at a fraction of AWS costs, particularly from European companies and indie SaaS founders who don't need multi-region redundancy. The trade-offs are real. Support response times of several hours are normal, and there is no 24/7 phone support. US presence is limited to a single Ashburn location. There are no managed services comparable to GKE, EKS, or AWS Lambda. Compliance certifications (ISO 27001) exist but the breadth is narrower than major cloud providers. Who should not use Hetzner: US-centric teams requiring multiple US regions, organizations needing AWS-level managed services, companies where compliance audits require extensive cloud certification coverage, or teams that cannot absorb slower support response times on production incidents.
Key Features
Pricing Plans
CX22
- 2 vCPU
- 4GB RAM
- 40GB SSD
- 20TB transfer
CX32
- 4 vCPU
- 8GB RAM
- 80GB SSD
- 20TB transfer
CX42
- 8 vCPU
- 16GB RAM
- 160GB SSD
- 20TB transfer
Pros
- Unbeatable price-to-performance ratio
- Excellent European data center locations
- Dedicated servers at cloud prices
- Server auction for incredible deals
- GDPR-compliant European hosting
- 20TB included transfer is extremely generous
Cons
- Limited managed services
- No equivalent to Lambda or managed databases
- US region only recently added
- Less polished control panel than DigitalOcean
- No PaaS layer with bare infrastructure only
- Support is email-only on basic plans
Best For
- European teams that need cheap, reliable VPS hosting with EU data residency
- self-hosted applications where cost-per-GB-RAM is the primary metric
- indie hackers and side projects where DigitalOcean pricing is too high
- dedicated server workloads where bare-metal pricing matters
Not Ideal For
- US companies with SOC 2 Type II compliance requirements
- teams that need a wide managed services catalog (Hetzner is VMs + storage, not a full cloud)
- latency-sensitive US-east or US-west workloads (limited US presence)
Potential Deal Breakers
- no SOC 2 Type II certification (limits US enterprise use cases)
- single US region with limited North American presence
- much smaller service catalog than AWS, GCP, or Azure
Data & Privacy
German hosting provider with data centers in Germany and Finland. Strong GDPR compliance as a German company. No data mining, no AI training, no advertising. Your server data stays on your infrastructure. Minimal data collection. Popular choice for privacy-conscious European hosting.
Who Is This For?
Hands-on tested May 2026
Signup Experience
Email signup with ID verification required -- passport or national ID scan takes 1-2 business days to process. Credit card or SEPA bank transfer for payment. Once verified, server provisioning is fast. Interface is functional rather than polished but straightforward.
For Home Users
Cloud servers from EUR 3.79/mo offer exceptional value -- significantly cheaper than DigitalOcean or Vultr for equivalent specs. Great for personal projects, homelab workloads, and learning. EU data centers are ideal for European users or privacy-sensitive projects.
For Business Users
Dedicated servers, managed Kubernetes, load balancers, and object storage round out the offering. 40-60 percent cheaper than comparable DigitalOcean plans for CPU and RAM. Ideal for cost-conscious startups and European businesses needing GDPR-friendly infrastructure. Verification requirement adds friction but is a one-time step.
Our Verdict
Hetzner is the best price-per-vCPU in the European market by a significant margin. If your workload runs in EU, the cost savings vs DigitalOcean or AWS are real and consistent. The service catalog is thin compared to the major clouds, but for teams that just need VMs, Postgres, and object storage at low cost, Hetzner is hard to beat.