Hetzner Cloud
European VPS provider with shockingly cheap dedicated machines. The cost-leader of cloud hosting.
VISIT HETZNER CLOUDKey takeaway: On price per unit of compute, nothing else on this list is close. Pair Hetzner with Coolify or Dokku and you get a Render-shaped platform for a fraction of the cost. Accept in exchange that you are administering Linux machines, with few regions and no managed-services layer to hide behind when something breaks.
Quick facts
- CategoryVPS / app platform
- PricingPaid
- LicenseProprietary
- Created2017
- GitHub starsclosed
- Edge-readyNo
- Free tierNo
- Egress billingFair
Bundled services: Cloud servers Volumes Load balancers Object storage
What it is
Hetzner is a German hosting company with a Cloud product offering shockingly cheap VPS instances. A 4 vCPU / 8GB / 80GB SSD machine is around €6/month, a fraction of equivalent AWS / DigitalOcean pricing. Bandwidth is included up to 20TB/month. The trade-off is fewer regions (Germany / Finland / US) and less polish on the managed-services layer.
Best for
- Cost-sensitive workloads at any scale
- Apps that pair Hetzner VPS with a self-hosted PaaS (Coolify, Dokku)
- European data residency requirements
- Side projects and indie deployments
When not to pick it
Skip Hetzner for managed-PaaS shape briefs, you are running Linux machines, not deploying from git. Skip for global apps where region count matters.
My take
Hetzner is the price-performance leader by a wide margin. Pair with Coolify or Dokku for the PaaS layer and you have a Render-shape platform at 1/10th the cost.
What the price actually buys
Hetzner sells straightforward Linux machines at a price the rest of the market does not attempt to match. The specification per pound is several times what a hyperscaler gives you, generous bandwidth is included rather than metered into a surprise, and the surrounding pieces are there: volumes, load balancers, private networking, object storage, and a clean API for provisioning. For a workload that is CPU or memory bound, a single Hetzner box frequently replaces an autoscaling group that existed only because instances were expensive elsewhere. That is the part people miss. The cheapest architecture is often not the cleverest one, it is the one that fits on hardware you can afford to over-provision and then forget about. European data residency comes as a side benefit, with Germany and Finland as the main locations plus a US presence for transatlantic traffic.
The operations you inherit
Nothing here is managed. You patch the kernel, you configure the firewall, you set up backups and then actually test restoring from them, you decide what monitoring looks like, and when a disk fills at midnight nobody else gets paged. There is no managed Postgres with point-in-time recovery included, so the database is your responsibility in a way it is not on Render or DigitalOcean. Region count is small, so global latency is not a problem Hetzner solves for you. The usual answer to the first issue is a self-hosted PaaS: Coolify or Dokku on top gives you git deploys, TLS, and provisioned databases, recovering most of the experience at a fraction of the price. That combination is excellent when someone on the team enjoys owning a server and a poor idea when nobody does.
Frequently asked questions
Is Hetzner good for production?
Yes, and plenty of serious workloads run on it. The hardware is reliable and the network is fine. What you accept is that operations are yours: patching, backups, monitoring, and incident response have no vendor behind them. For teams with someone comfortable administering Linux, it is a sound production choice. For teams without, it is a liability.
Hetzner or DigitalOcean?
Hetzner when price per unit of compute is the deciding factor and you are happy managing machines yourself. DigitalOcean when you want managed Postgres, App Platform for git deploys, more regions, and documentation that answers most questions before you ask. DigitalOcean costs meaningfully more and removes meaningfully more work. Decide based on whose time is scarce.
Can I run a PaaS on Hetzner?
That is the most popular way to use it. Install Coolify or Dokku on a Hetzner server and you get git-based deploys, automatic TLS, and provisioned Postgres or Redis, approximating a Render-style workflow at VPS prices. You still own updates, backups, and uptime for both the platform layer and the applications running on it.
Links
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If Hetzner Cloud is your pick, the next conversation is short
The 30-min call is where your hosting choice becomes a real architecture, a migration plan if you are switching, and a price range you can take to your stakeholders without surprise bills in month 4. Describe your stack, your traffic shape, your budget. I tell you whether Hetzner Cloud is genuinely your fit.