Hetzner Cloud Review (2026)

Hetzner Cloud is 3-4x cheaper than DigitalOcean for equivalent specs. Here's whether the savings are worth it.

What You Get

VPS (Cloud Servers) — from €3.29/mo (2 vCPU, 2GB RAM)
Dedicated Servers — from €39/mo (real hardware)
Block Storage — from €0.044/GB/mo
Load Balancers — from €5.39/mo
Managed Kubernetes — free control plane
Firewalls — free
Floating IPs — free (while attached)
20TB bandwidth included on every server

What I Like

1. The pricing is real. €5.39/mo for 2 vCPU / 4GB RAM. DigitalOcean charges $24 for the same specs. This isn't a loss leader — Hetzner has been profitable for 25+ years.

2. Performance is excellent. AMD EPYC processors, NVMe SSDs, 20TB bandwidth. Benchmarks match or beat DigitalOcean and Linode at a fraction of the cost.

3. 20TB bandwidth included. Most providers give 1-5TB. Hetzner gives 20TB. This matters for media-heavy apps.

4. Dedicated servers. Real hardware from €39/mo. No noisy neighbors. 64GB RAM dedicated server for €59/mo is absurd value.

5. Clean API and CLI. hcloud CLI is simple and functional. Terraform provider works well.

What I Don't Like

1. Limited US presence. Only Ashburn, VA for US. If you need US West or multiple US regions, look elsewhere.

2. No managed databases. You manage PostgreSQL yourself. DigitalOcean offers managed databases starting at $15/mo.

3. Support is slower. DigitalOcean has faster support response. Hetzner support works but isn't as responsive.

4. Fewer one-click apps. DigitalOcean Marketplace has hundreds of one-click deployments. Hetzner has a smaller selection.

5. No managed services. No managed Redis, no serverless functions, no object storage CDN. It's infrastructure-only.

Hetzner + Coolify = Best Self-Hosting Setup

# Deploy Coolify on Hetzner
ssh root@your-hetzner-server
curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | bash

Coolify gives you a Heroku-like dashboard on your Hetzner server. Deploy apps via Git push, manage databases, SSL — all for €5/month.

When to Use Hetzner

✅ Budget is a priority ✅ EU hosting (GDPR compliance) ✅ Self-managing infrastructure is fine ✅ Need dedicated servers ✅ High bandwidth usage

❌ Need US West regions ❌ Want managed databases ❌ Need extensive managed services ❌ Want fastest possible support

Verdict

9/10 for value. 7/10 for convenience. Hetzner is the best value in cloud hosting. If you can manage your own infrastructure (or use Coolify/Dokku), there's no better deal. The lack of managed services is the tradeoff for 3-4x savings. Pair with DigitalOcean managed Postgres ($15/mo) if you don't want to manage databases.