Hetzner Cloud is a German cloud provider known for offering 2–3x better compute value than AWS, GCP, or Azure. It is popular among European developers, agencies, and startups for its affordable pricing, reliable infrastructure, and clear pricing structure.
Hetzner Online GmbH is a German technology company founded in 1997 that started as a dedicated server provider and has grown into one of Europe's most respected cloud infrastructure companies. Hetzner Cloud, their virtualized cloud offering launched in 2017, has become the default choice for cost-conscious European developers and organizations who need reliable cloud infrastructure without the enterprise pricing of AWS, GCP, or Azure.
The primary reason Hetzner is popular is price-per-compute value. Hetzner owns its data center infrastructure outright — they built and operate their own facilities in Nuremberg and Falkenstein (Germany), Helsinki (Finland), Ashburn (Virginia, USA), and Singapore. By owning their hardware and running their own facilities without layers of leasing and subcontracting, Hetzner can pass dramatic savings to customers. A Hetzner CX32 (4 vCPU, 8GB RAM, 80GB SSD, 20TB bandwidth) costs approximately 7 euros per month. An AWS equivalent (t3.large, 2 vCPU, 8GB RAM, with EBS and data transfer) costs $70–$100 per month — roughly 10–15x more expensive.
Beyond the pricing, Hetzner Cloud has a clean, straightforward interface, an active community, and extensive documentation in English and German. The API is well-designed and works seamlessly with Terraform, Ansible, and other IaC tools. Managed Load Balancers start at €5.39/month, Managed Databases are available for PostgreSQL and MySQL, and their Object Storage service is S3-compatible for easy migration from AWS S3. Hetzner's network backbone is strong within Europe with peering to major internet exchanges.
Popular use cases on Hetzner include agency web hosting (running tens of client websites per server at a fraction of AWS cost), Kubernetes clusters (using k3s or Hetzner Cloud Controller Manager), cryptocurrency node hosting (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana validators), and large-scale distributed systems that need many servers simultaneously. Our Hetzner accounts provide server limits from 5 ($45) to 100 ($999) servers, making it practical to deploy substantial infrastructure immediately. The 100-server limit account at $999 is particularly valuable for infrastructure companies that need to spin up and down large server fleets cost-efficiently.
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