Hetzner Review 2026: Best Budget VPS in Europe?

Hetzner is one of those hosting companies that people either swear by or have never heard of. There is very little in between. In the budget hosting world dominated by Hostinger, IONOS, and GoDaddy, Hetzner has quietly built a reputation as the infrastructure provider that developers, sysadmins, and technically minded website owners genuinely recommend to each other. Not through flashy marketing campaigns, but through word of mouth and consistently delivering excellent hardware at prices that make the big US cloud providers look absurd.

Hetzner is not for everyone. It is a company built by engineers for engineers, and that philosophy shows in everything from the way their products are structured to the way their support operates. If you are looking for a beginner friendly hosting experience with live chat, one click site builders, and promotional pricing, Hetzner is probably not where you should start. If you want raw power, transparent pricing, European data sovereignty, and the freedom to build whatever you want on serious hardware, there is arguably no better value in the market right now.

In this review I will cover everything from their newly launched web hosting plans and cloud servers to their legendary dedicated server lineup and the unique server auction. I will also dig into the areas where Hetzner falls short, because there are a few, and they matter.

Company Background

Hetzner was founded in 1997 by Martin Hetzner in Gunzenhausen, Germany. The company started as a classic dedicated server provider and has grown into one of the largest data centre operators in Europe, with hundreds of thousands of servers in operation across multiple continents.

Unlike many hosting companies that rent infrastructure from third parties, Hetzner owns and operates its own data centres. The European facilities are in Nuremberg and Falkenstein (both in Germany) and Helsinki (Finland). In the US they operate in Ashburn, Virginia and Hillsboro, Oregon. In 2024 they expanded into Asia with a Singapore location. All of their data centres are ISO 27001:2022 certified and run on 100% renewable energy.

What makes Hetzner particularly relevant for European website owners is the company structure itself. Hetzner Online GmbH is a German company, headquartered in Germany, subject exclusively to German and EU law. This means your data is not subject to the US CLOUD Act, which allows American authorities to demand access to data stored by US based companies regardless of where the servers are located. If GDPR compliance and data sovereignty are priorities for your project, this distinction matters more than most people realise.

The company has around 500 employees and takes a deliberately lean approach to operations. There is no enterprise sales team, no partner programme, and minimal marketing spend. This keeps costs down and allows Hetzner to pass the savings directly to customers in the form of lower prices. It also means the experience is more self service than what you might be used to from other providers.

Web Hosting Plans and Pricing

Hetzner recently overhauled their shared web hosting product line, replacing the old Level 1, 4, 9, and 19 plans with a cleaner S, M, L, and XL structure. The new plans include meaningful improvements like Varnish caching on every tier, better PHP process allocation, and a more transparent pricing model.

Here is how the new plans break down (all prices excluding VAT):

Webhosting S: $2/month

• 10 GB NVMe storage
• 2 PHP processes
• 192 MB PHP memory limit
• 1 MariaDB or PostgreSQL database
• 1 cron job
• Varnish caching
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Free SSL via Let’s Encrypt

This is the entry level plan and it is genuinely cheap. It works for a single simple website, a personal blog, or a small portfolio. The 2 PHP process limit means it will not handle heavy concurrent traffic, but for a site that gets a few hundred visitors a day it does the job.

Webhosting M: $5/month

• 50 GB NVMe storage
• 5 PHP processes
• 256 MB PHP memory limit
• 5 databases
• 5 cron jobs
• Varnish caching
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Free SSL

The M plan is the sweet spot for most small to medium websites. Five PHP processes gives you enough headroom for a WordPress site with moderate traffic, and the extra databases mean you can run multiple sites or applications on the same plan.

Webhosting L: $10/month

• 100 GB NVMe storage
• 10 PHP processes
• 384 MB PHP memory limit
• 20 databases
• 10 cron jobs
• SSH access
• Varnish caching
• Redis object caching
• Node.js support
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Free SSL

The L plan is where things get interesting for developers. SSH access, Redis, and Node.js support are features you typically do not see on shared hosting at this price. Redis object caching in particular is a significant performance boost for WordPress and other database heavy applications, as it keeps frequently requested data in memory rather than hitting the database on every page load.

Webhosting XL: $19/month

• 300 GB NVMe storage
• 20 PHP processes
• 512 MB PHP memory limit
• 50 databases
• 20 cron jobs
• SSH access
• Varnish caching
• Redis object caching
• Node.js support
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Free SSL

The XL plan is designed for agencies, complex projects, and high traffic sites. Twenty PHP processes and 512 MB of memory per script gives you the resources to run a busy WooCommerce store, a large Typo3 installation, or multiple client sites from a single package.

Important: Domains Are Not Included

One thing that sets Hetzner apart from most competitors is that web hosting plans do not include a domain name. You need to register your domain separately, either through Hetzner (starting from €4.90/year for a .de domain) or through any other registrar and then point it at your hosting.

Hetzner is upfront about why they do this. They want to avoid cross subsidising products and keep pricing transparent. There are no hidden costs buried in the plan price, and you only pay for what you actually need. If you already own a domain elsewhere, you can connect it for €0.76/month per external domain.

This approach is refreshingly honest, but it does mean the total cost of getting online with Hetzner is slightly higher than the headline web hosting price suggests if you do not already own a domain.

No Introductory Pricing Games

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Hetzner’s pricing model is the complete absence of introductory discounts. The price you see is the price you pay, this month, next month, and next year. There is no shock when your plan renews at 3x the promotional rate. There is no need to lock into a 48 month commitment to get a reasonable deal.

Every plan is billed monthly with no minimum commitment beyond 30 days notice for cancellation. In a hosting industry built on bait and switch pricing, this straightforward approach is genuinely unusual and worth appreciating.

Cloud Servers (VPS)

Hetzner’s cloud platform is where the company really shines and where the majority of the developer community’s enthusiasm comes from. The combination of performance, pricing, and European infrastructure makes it one of the most compelling VPS offerings on the market.

Instance Types

Hetzner organises its cloud servers into four families:

CX (Cost Optimised) — Shared Intel/AMD vCPUs. Starting at €3.49/month for the CX23 (2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe). Available only in Germany and Finland. Best for development, testing, and lightweight production workloads.

CAX (ARM) — Ampere Altra ARM processors with excellent energy efficiency and price to performance ratio. Similar pricing to CX but with ARM architecture. Great for containerised workloads and applications that support ARM.

CPX (Regular Performance) — Shared vCPU instances available in all regions including the US and Singapore. Slightly higher price than CX but with broader geographic availability.

CCX (Dedicated vCPU) — Guaranteed CPU resources not shared with other tenants. Best for production workloads, databases, high traffic websites, and anything where consistent performance matters. Prices start around €14.50/month for 2 dedicated vCPUs, 8 GB RAM, and 80 GB NVMe.

What’s Included

Every cloud server comes with NVMe SSD storage in RAID10, IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, DDoS protection via Nokia Deepfield Defender, stateful firewalls, and one click app deployments for popular software like Docker, WordPress, Nextcloud, and GitLab.

The standout feature is the traffic allowance. In European data centres you get 20 TB of included traffic per month, which is extraordinarily generous compared to competitors. For context, DigitalOcean includes 1 to 6 TB depending on the plan, and hyperscalers like AWS charge per GB of egress traffic which can quickly become the most expensive part of your bill. US locations include 1 TB and Singapore includes 0.5 TB, so the value proposition is strongest when you host in Europe.

Billing

Hetzner uses hourly billing with a monthly price cap. You are billed for each hour your server exists (rounded up), but your bill will never exceed the monthly cap. If you spin up a server for testing and delete it after three hours, you pay for three hours. If you run it all month, you pay the monthly rate. This is how cloud billing should work.

API and Developer Experience

The Hetzner Cloud API is clean, well documented, and genuinely developer friendly. There are official SDKs for Python and Go, plus community libraries for most other languages. Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes integrations are all supported, making Hetzner a natural fit for infrastructure as code workflows and automated deployments.

The Hetzner Cloud Console (their web based management interface) is straightforward and fast. It does not have the overwhelming complexity of an AWS or Azure console, which depending on your perspective is either a limitation or a relief. It does what you need without drowning you in 200 services you will never use.

Dedicated Servers

This is where Hetzner originally made its name, and the dedicated server offering remains one of the strongest in the industry. If you need bare metal hardware at a price that makes enterprise sales reps weep, this is where to look.

AX Line (AMD)

The AX series uses AMD Ryzen and EPYC processors and represents the performance flagship:

• AX42 — AMD Ryzen 7 7700, 64 GB RAM, 2x 1 TB NVMe — approximately €47/month
• AX52 — AMD Ryzen 7 7700, 64 GB RAM, 2x 1 TB NVMe (higher spec disk config) — approximately €57/month
• AX102 — AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, 128 GB RAM, 2x 1.92 TB NVMe — approximately €107/month
• AX162 — AMD EPYC 9454P (48 cores), 128 GB ECC RAM, 2x 1.92 TB NVMe — approximately €199/month

EX Line (Intel)

The EX series uses Intel Core processors and offers excellent single thread performance at lower price points:

• EX44 — Intel Core i5 13500, 64 GB RAM, 2x 512 GB NVMe — approximately €36/month
• EX63 — Intel Ultra 7 265, 64 GB RAM, higher spec configuration — higher price

Server Auction

The server auction is one of Hetzner’s most unique offerings. These are refurbished dedicated servers that Hetzner sells at decreasing prices through a live auction system. The prices start at a set level and drop over time until someone buys the server. There are no setup fees, and you can often pick up a server that originally cost €60 to €80/month for significantly less.

The auction servers are ideal for projects where you need dedicated hardware but are flexible on the exact specifications. The hardware is tested and fully functional, just not brand new. For development environments, staging servers, backup infrastructure, or any use case where the latest generation processor is not critical, the auction is an incredible value.

What’s Included With Dedicated Servers

All dedicated servers come with unlimited traffic on a 1 Gbit/s connection (10 Gbit/s available as an add on with a 20 TB cap), full root access, IPMI/KVM remote access for server management, and DDoS protection. Servers are managed through the Robot administration interface, which handles things like rescue mode, OS reinstallation, reverse DNS, and hardware upgrade requests.

One important note: Hetzner dedicated servers are unmanaged. You are responsible for everything above the hardware layer. That means operating system installation, security updates, firewall configuration, monitoring, backups, and troubleshooting. There is no managed option for dedicated servers directly from Hetzner (though third party managed service providers like RDEM Systems offer this as an add on service).

The konsoleH Control Panel

For web hosting customers, Hetzner provides its proprietary control panel called konsoleH. This is the interface you use to manage your web hosting account, including databases, email accounts, DNS records, FTP access, and SSL certificates.

konsoleH is functional but it is not going to win any design awards. If you are used to cPanel or Plesk, the interface feels more utilitarian and less polished. It gets the job done, but the learning curve is steeper than what beginners might expect. The WordPress installer is straightforward, and basic administration tasks like creating databases and setting up email are simple enough once you know where things are.

For cloud and dedicated server customers, there is no web hosting control panel at all. You get a blank server with root access and it is up to you to install and configure whatever you need. Many Hetzner users install CyberPanel, CloudPanel, or Plesk on their cloud servers for web hosting management, but that is a bring your own solution approach.

Performance

Hetzner’s performance credentials are well documented by independent benchmarking services. On VPSBenchmarks, Hetzner consistently ranks among the top providers for price to performance, earning recognition as one of the best VPS options under $15 in multiple years.

Independent cloud server benchmarks show NVMe disk speeds reaching around 5.96 GB/s sequential and approximately 40,000 random IOPS at 4K block sizes. Network throughput within Europe is exceptional, with speeds of nearly 14 Gbit/s measured to Amsterdam. These are not marketing numbers; these are results from standardised YABS benchmark scripts run by independent testers.

The dedicated servers are even more impressive. The EX44 with its Intel i5 13500 delivers excellent single thread performance for its price, while the AX162 with the 48 core EPYC 9454P handles enterprise grade workloads at a fraction of what equivalent hardware would cost at AWS or Azure.

For web hosting plans, Varnish caching (available on all plans) and Redis object caching (L and XL plans) significantly improve CMS performance. Varnish serves cached content directly without hitting PHP or the database, resulting in dramatically faster page loads for repeat visitors.

One caveat: Hetzner does not publish a formal uptime SLA for cloud servers. Dedicated servers come with a 99.9% network availability guarantee. In practice, Hetzner’s European infrastructure is highly reliable, but the absence of a documented cloud SLA is worth noting if you need contractual uptime commitments.

Data Centre Locations

Hetzner operates in the following locations:

Germany: Nuremberg (NBG1) and Falkenstein (FSN1). These are Hetzner’s home base, with the largest capacity and broadest product availability. Both locations offer all cloud instance types, all dedicated server lines, and web hosting.

Finland: Helsinki (HEL1). Full cloud and dedicated server availability. A good choice if your audience is in the Nordics or Baltics.

United States: Ashburn, Virginia and Hillsboro, Oregon. Cloud and dedicated servers available, but with reduced traffic allowances (1 TB vs 20 TB in EU) and slightly higher prices. No web hosting available from US locations.

Singapore: Cloud servers only. Traffic allowance is 0.5 TB. Pricing is higher than EU locations. This is Hetzner’s newest region, launched in 2024.

For European projects, the German and Finnish locations provide excellent coverage with low latency across Western, Central, and Northern Europe. The US locations make Hetzner viable for North American audiences, though the reduced traffic allowance means you need to be more mindful of bandwidth usage.

Additional Products

Beyond the core hosting products, Hetzner offers a number of complementary services:

Storage Box — Network attached storage accessible via SFTP, SCP, rsync, Samba/CIFS, and BorgBackup. Plans start at €3.81/month for 1 TB. Excellent for backups and file storage.

Storage Share — Managed Nextcloud hosting for file synchronisation and sharing. This gives you a private cloud storage solution hosted on Hetzner infrastructure, accessible from any device. Plans start at a few euros per month.

Load Balancers — Cloud load balancers starting at €5.83/month. Supports HTTP, HTTPS, and TCP traffic distribution across multiple cloud servers.

Managed Servers — Hetzner handles the server management including security updates, monitoring, and basic administration. Starting from around €33/month on top of the server cost. This is only available for certain dedicated server configurations.

Floating IPs, Volumes, and Snapshots — Standard cloud infrastructure building blocks available at pay per use pricing.

Domain Registration — Available from €4.90/year for .de domains, with support for hundreds of TLDs.

Customer Support

This is the area where Hetzner draws the most criticism, and the criticism is largely fair. Hetzner support operates via tickets and email, with phone support available for dedicated server customers. There is no live chat.

Response times can be slow by the standards of providers like Hostinger or SiteGround, where live chat connects you to an agent in minutes. Hetzner support requests can take hours or occasionally longer, especially for non urgent issues. The quality of responses when they arrive is generally good, as the support team has genuine technical depth, but the wait can be frustrating during urgent situations.

The community tutorials and documentation are a strong point. Hetzner maintains an extensive docs site covering everything from basic server setup to advanced Kubernetes deployments, and the community contributes additional tutorials regularly. For many technical users, the documentation is sufficient to resolve issues without ever contacting support.

However, there are more serious concerns that come up in user reviews. Multiple reports exist of accounts being terminated without adequate warning, sometimes resulting in data loss. Hetzner’s identity verification process for new accounts can also be frustrating, particularly for international customers whose documentation does not match what Hetzner expects. These are not everyday occurrences, but they are common enough in review forums to warrant mention.

Security

Hetzner’s data centres are ISO 27001:2022 certified with 24/7 physical monitoring. DDoS protection is provided across all products via Nokia Deepfield Defender, which was implemented after extensive testing across their European infrastructure.

Cloud servers include stateful firewalls at no additional cost, and all web hosting plans include free SSL certificates through Let’s Encrypt. Dedicated servers come with basic DDoS protection included, with additional DDoS protection tiers available as add ons.

For cloud and dedicated servers, you are responsible for your own application level security. That means configuring firewalls, keeping software updated, implementing intrusion detection, and managing backups. Hetzner provides the tools, but they do not manage the security of your server for you (unless you purchase their managed server add on).

Who Is Hetzner Best For?

Hetzner is an excellent fit for:

• Developers and DevOps teams who want affordable cloud infrastructure with a clean API and Terraform/Ansible support
• European businesses that prioritise GDPR compliance and data sovereignty
• Technical website owners who are comfortable managing their own servers or web hosting
• Agencies running multiple client sites on the L or XL web hosting plans
• Projects needing dedicated servers where the price to performance ratio is the primary concern
• Self hosters building private cloud setups with Nextcloud, GitLab, or other self hosted applications
• Budget conscious startups that want serious hardware without venture scale cloud bills

Hetzner is less ideal for:

• Complete beginners who want a managed, hands off hosting experience
• Anyone who needs phone or live chat support as a baseline expectation
• Projects requiring managed databases, managed Kubernetes, or other platform services
• Users who want domain registration and hosting bundled together in a single price
• Sites targeting audiences primarily in Asia or regions outside Europe and North America

Final Verdict

Hetzner does not try to be everything to everyone, and that is exactly what makes it so good at what it does. The company focuses relentlessly on delivering excellent infrastructure at honest prices, and in that mission it succeeds more convincingly than almost any other provider in the European market.

The web hosting plans are solid and well priced, particularly the L and XL tiers with SSH, Redis, and Node.js. The cloud servers are among the best value VPS instances available anywhere, with performance benchmarks that consistently place Hetzner at or near the top of independent rankings. And the dedicated server lineup, including the server auction, is in a league of its own when it comes to price per core, per GB of RAM, and per TB of storage.

The tradeoffs are real though. Support is slower than what you get at providers that invest heavily in customer service teams. The product experience is built for people who know what they are doing, not for people who need guidance. And the lack of a formal cloud uptime SLA may give risk averse enterprise buyers pause.

For technically capable European website owners, developers, and businesses who want maximum infrastructure value with full data sovereignty, Hetzner is not just a good option. It is the standard that other providers should be measured against.