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Hetzner: the verdict
Hetzner is the price-to-performance benchmark for cloud VPS. Every plan has local NVMe storage, billing is hourly with no contract, the API is clean, and the underlying hardware is fast and consistent. Developers reach for it by default.
The limits are geographic and procedural: the datacenters are EU-first with only a few US and Singapore locations, and Hetzner requires ID verification to sign up, which catches some people out.
Best for: Developers who want the fastest cheap VPS and are fine with EU-centric infrastructure.
Strengths
- Best raw price-to-performance in cloud VPS
- Local NVMe on every plan, hourly billing
- Clean API and control panel
Watch-outs
- Only two non-EU datacenters (Ashburn, Singapore, Hillsboro)
- ID verification required to sign up
- Self-managed, ticket-only support
Who runs it, and since when
Founded in 1997 in Germany. Privately held and still founder-influenced, operating some of the largest datacenters in Europe.
Ownership: Hetzner Online GmbH, privately owned.
Worth calling out:
- NVMe on every plan, a clean web console and a first-class API with a Terraform provider and CLI.
- Hourly billing, snapshots, private networks, floating IPs, and load balancers as cheap add-ons.
- Optional managed backups and volumes.
Plans, the renewal price and the hidden fees
The Cloud CX and CPX lines start around 4.59 to 6.99 euros a month for 2 vCPU, 4 GB of RAM and 40 GB of NVMe. Dedicated-vCPU CCX plans cost more for guaranteed cores.
Billing is hourly up to a monthly cap, with no contract and no renewal jump. You can create a server for an afternoon and pay cents.
There is no money-back guarantee because there is nothing to refund: you are billed for what you use and you delete the server when you are done.
Not in the headline price:
- Automated backups are a paid add-on at 20% of the server price.
- There is no SSL, control panel or managed anything: it is a bare server. Budget your time or use a panel like Coolify or a managed layer.
- Traffic beyond the generous included allowance (usually 20 TB) is billed per terabyte.
Speed and uptime, from independent tests
Hetzner is consistently at or near the top of independent price-to-performance benchmarks (getdeploying, HostingGuider 2026). Local NVMe gives very high disk throughput, and single-core performance is strong and stable.
The catch is that local NVMe means if a physical node fails, an unbacked-up server can lose data. Take the paid backups or run your own.
Datacenters: Nuremberg and Falkenstein (Germany), Helsinki (Finland), Ashburn and Hillsboro (US), and Singapore.
The support experience
Support is ticket-only, in English and German, and it is competent and reasonably quick for infrastructure issues (a network problem, a hardware fault). There is no 24/7 chat and no application-level help, by design.
For a self-managed VPS this is usually fine; you are expected to run the server yourself.
Migrating a site in and out
Fully self-managed. Migration is rsync plus a database dump plus a DNS change, or a server image if you are moving within Hetzner.
Security, backups and account isolation
Free network-level DDoS protection, private networking, and cloud firewalls you configure in the console. Everything above that (OS hardening, SSL, updates, backups) is yours.
Who it suits, and who should look elsewhere
Use Hetzner if
- Developers who want the fastest cheap VPS and are comfortable running Linux.
- Anyone building infrastructure as code: the API and Terraform support are excellent.
- EU-focused projects, or US projects that are fine with Ashburn or Hillsboro.
Look elsewhere if
- Anyone who wants managed hosting, a control panel, or 24/7 chat support.
- Projects that need a datacenter in Asia beyond Singapore, or in South America, Africa or Australia.
- People who will be blocked by the ID verification requirement at signup.
Hetzner alternatives worth a look
If Hetzner is not quite right, these are the hosts we would look at instead:
- Contabo: More RAM and storage per euro and broader datacenter coverage, at the cost of slower support and less consistent CPU.
- Cloudways: If you want Hetzner-class performance managed for you.
The bottom line
Hetzner is the cheap VPS to beat. NVMe everywhere, consistent CPU, hourly billing, a proper API, and a price that shames the shared-hosting renewals. For a developer, it is close to a default choice.
It gives you nothing above the operating system and its datacenter map is EU-heavy. If that fits, there is very little reason to pay more.
Specs and features at a glance
| Starting price | €4.59/mo (pay hourly or monthly, no contract) |
|---|---|
| Renews at | €4.59/mo |
| Storage | 40 GB NVMe |
| Bandwidth | 20 TB |
| Sites (entry plan) | Unlimited (self-managed) |
| RAM | 4 GB |
| vCPU | 2 |
| Free domain | No |
| Free SSL | No |
| Free migration | No |
| Backups | Paid add-on (20% of server price) |
| Money-back | None |
| Support | Ticket |
| Datacenters | Germany (Nuremberg, Falkenstein), Finland (Helsinki), USA (Ashburn, Hillsboro), Singapore |
Sources
Pricing and specs on this page were checked against: