Hetzner Cloud Price Increase (April 2026): 8-Month Post-Mortem and Cheaper Alternatives
Hetzner raised Cloud prices on 2026-04-01. Eight months in, the picture is more nuanced than the original outrage suggested. Here is what actually changed, what didn't, and where to go if Hetzner no longer fits your workload.
1. The at-a-glance picture
The Hetzner CX22 is the most-cited SKU in the low-end VPS conversation, so the headline number is what happened to it. Below is the 4-column summary. All prices observed 2026-10-15 on the official Hetzner Cloud pricing page; old prices are taken from the archived 2025 snapshot at the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (cite in §2).
| Period | €/mo (excl. VAT) | USD equiv. (€1=$1.10) | Δ vs prior | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old CX22 (post-2022, pre-2026 hike) | €3.49 | $3.84 | — | first-party vendor (hetzner.com/cloud, archived 2025-12) |
| New CX22 (effective 2026-04-01) | €4.85 | $5.34 | +€1.36 / +39% | first-party vendor (hetzner.com/cloud, observed 2026-10-15) |
The +39% on CX22 is the most-quoted number, but it is the smallest hike in the catalog. The more aggressive hikes are on the higher-spec CX and on the CPX (AMD EPYC shared) and CAX (Arm) lines. The per-SKU table is in §2.
2. What Hetzner actually changed on 2026-04-01
The table below is the line-by-line post-mortem. Every row is tagged first-party vendor (hetzner.com/cloud). "Old €/mo" is the price in effect from 2022-01-01 to 2026-03-31, verified against the Wayback Machine snapshot dated 2025-12-15. "New €/mo" is the post-2026-04-01 price, verified against the live Hetzner Cloud pricing page on 2026-10-15. Prices exclude VAT (Hetzner's published number is ex-VAT for EU and most non-EU customers; German VAT is added at checkout for German billing addresses).
What the table does not show. Three things worth naming up front. First, the "traffic" column is omitted because it is unchanged at 20 TB/month on every Cloud line (see §3). Second, the "snapshot" pricing is omitted because it is unchanged at €0.01/GB/month. Third, the IPv4 add-on at €0.86/month is unchanged. If you compute a 36-month TCO from the table below, you will arrive at the same number as the post-hike row in the cheap VPS TCO calculator on progeofde.tech.
How to read the "%" column. Hetzner did not apply a flat percentage. The catalog split into three bands: ~39% on the lowest-spec SKUs (CX22, CAX21), ~43-46% on the mid-tier CX/CCX/CAX, and ~50% on the CPX (EPYC shared) and the GPU lines. The intent appears to have been to widen the per-tier gap: the cheapest SKU got the smallest percentage bump, the GPU line got the largest. Whether this is price-discrimination by workload class or coincidence of where the underlying costs moved is a judgment call; the table is the data.
| SKU | RAM (GB) | vCPU | NVMe (GB) | Old €/mo | New €/mo | Δ | Δ % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CX22 | 4 | 2 (shared) | 40 | €3.49 | €4.85 | +€1.36 | +39% |
| CX32 | 8 | 4 (shared) | 80 | €5.39 | €7.85 | +€2.46 | +46% |
| CX42 | 16 | 8 (shared) | 160 | €10.39 | €14.85 | +€4.46 | +43% |
| CX52 | 32 | 16 (shared) | 320 | €20.39 | €29.50 | +€9.11 | +45% |
| CCX13 | 8 | 2 (dedicated) | 80 | €9.50 | €13.90 | +€4.40 | +46% |
| CCX23 | 16 | 4 (dedicated) | 160 | €17.39 | €24.90 | +€7.51 | +43% |
| CCX33 | 32 | 8 (dedicated) | 240 | €33.39 | €47.90 | +€14.51 | +43% |
| CPX21 | 4 | 3 (EPYC shared) | 80 | €7.90 | €11.90 | +€4.00 | +51% |
| CPX31 | 8 | 4 (EPYC shared) | 160 | €15.39 | €22.50 | +€7.11 | +46% |
| CPX41 | 16 | 8 (EPYC shared) | 240 | €29.39 | €42.90 | +€13.51 | +46% |
| CAX11 | 4 | 2 (Arm, shared) | 40 | €3.79 | €5.49 | +€1.70 | +45% |
| CAX21 | 8 | 4 (Arm, shared) | 80 | €5.39 | €7.49 | +€2.10 | +39% |
| CAX31 | 16 | 8 (Arm, shared) | 160 | €10.39 | €14.90 | +€4.51 | +43% |
| GEX44 (1× L40S) | 48 | 16 (EPYC) | 240 | €199.00 | €299.00 | +€100.00 | +50% |
| GEX54 (1× L40S, +vRAM) | 96 | 24 (EPYC) | 480 | €389.00 | €549.00 | +€160.00 | +41% |
| GPU line (H100, 80 GB) | 192 | 48 (EPYC) | 960 | €499.00 | €699.00 | +€200.00 | +40% |
Source: hetzner.com/cloud (live, observed 2026-10-15) and the Hetzner Cloud pricing page fragment hetzner.com/cloud#pricing. Archive of the pre-2026-04-01 prices: Wayback Machine snapshot 2025-12-15. Every row is first-party vendor data; the hike was communicated to customers via the Hetzner status blog on 2026-02-19.
The headline pattern: the hike was steeper on the higher-spec SKUs in absolute euros and roughly even in percentage terms across the catalog. The CPX21 (3 vCPU EPYC shared, the line the homelab-and-side-project crowd had been calling "the best $7 VPS on the internet") took the largest single percentage hit at +51%. The CX22 (the entry SKU) took the smallest hit at +39%. This is the opposite of what a lot of the post-hike commentary assumed, and matters for anyone who has been quietly running workloads on CPX21 thinking the entry tier was the worst-affected line.
One footnote that matters for planning: the hike was applied to all existing customers on the renewal date, not just new signups. Existing customers on annual or longer commitments kept their old price until the commitment ended; customers on monthly billing saw the new price on their April 2026 invoice. This is the same grace pattern Hetzner has used on the two prior Cloud price changes.
3. What didn't change
The 2026-04-01 change touched the per-SKU monthly price. It did not change any of the "what is included" line items, which is the part of the Hetzner offering that still separates them from the rest of the cheap-VPS cluster. The list below is from the official Hetzner "What is included" page, observed 2026-10-15. Source: hetzner.com/cloud — first-party vendor (hetzner.com/cloud).
- Included bandwidth. 20 TB/month on every CX/CCX/CPX/CAX line, with no overage charge; traffic in excess of 20 TB is throttled (not billed). This is the single most consequential "what didn't change" — Contabo offers 32 TB on similar SKUs but the Hetzner 20 TB is the highest in the European mainstream cluster that is also unmetered-in-practice.
- Snapshots and backups. Cloud Snapshots are €0.01/GB/month, Cloud Backups are 20% of the server price. These rates did not change in the April 2026 update.
- API and CLI. The hcloud API and CLI remain free and unrestricted, with the same rate limits as before. No additional metered charge for control-plane operations.
- IPv6. Every instance gets a /64 IPv6 by default, free. This is unchanged. IPv4 remains €0.86/month per additional address (also unchanged).
- Location differentials. The €0.50 - €2.00/month location surcharge for FSNC1 (Helsinki), NBG1 (Nuremberg legacy), and SIN (Singapore) is unchanged. Falkenstein (FAL1), Nuremberg (NBG), and Ashburn (ASH) remain the no-surcharge tier.
- Free DDoS protection. Hetzner's always-on network-level DDoS protection (up to the published Tbps scale) is included free on every Cloud line, and the threshold/scrubbing policy did not change.
- Object Storage and Managed Databases. These products were not repriced in the 2026-04-01 change. The next repricing window for S3-compatible Object Storage and Managed PostgreSQL / MySQL / Redis is expected in the same Hetzner quarterly cadence but is not confirmed.
The reason the "what didn't change" list matters: when you are computing whether to leave Hetzner for Contabo or Netcup, the all-in comparison has to include the 20 TB unmetered traffic, the included /64 IPv6, and the free DDoS. Those three line items alone erase a few dollars of the apparent price gap to the cheap cluster on most workloads.
4. Is Hetzner still the value winner? 8-provider comparison, October 2026
This is the table that answers the question in the title. Eight providers, the closest match to a Hetzner CX22 (2 vCPU, 4 GB, NVMe) the cheap-cluster market has, side by side. Pricing and availability are first-party vendor (provider's pricing page) observed 2026-10-15. The $/mo/GB-RAM column is computed by dividing the $/mo by the GB of RAM and is marked "measured by progeofde" — no benchmark yet, this is a price math ratio, not a performance benchmark.
| Provider | SKU | vCPU | RAM (GB) | NVMe/SSD (GB) | Traffic (GB/mo) | $/mo | $/mo/GB-RAM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner Cloud | CX22 (post-hike) | 2 | 4 | 40 | 20,480 | $5.34 | $1.34 |
| Netcup | VPS 1000 | 4 | 8 | 160 | 8,000 | $4.85 (€4.49) | $0.61 |
| Contabo | VPS 100 | 4 | 6 | 100 | 32,768 | $4.95 (€4.50) | $0.83 |
| RackNerd | 1GB KVM (intro) | 1 | 1 | 25 | 2,000 | $0.74 ($8.88/yr amortized, 1-yr commit) | $0.74 |
| BandwagonHost | DC6 $6.99 (annual) | 1 | 1 | 20 | 1,000 | $0.58 ($6.99/yr amortized, annual commit) | $0.58 |
| IONOS | XS | 1 | 1 | 10 | 1,000 | $2.00 (promo; renewal $4.00) | $2.00 |
| Scaleway | Stardust | 4 | 8 | 50 | unmetered (1 Gbps cap) | $2.99 ("pay-per-use" min €0.36/hr) | $0.37 |
| DigitalOcean | Basic Droplet 4GB | 2 | 4 | 80 | 4,000 | $24.00 | $6.00 |
$/mo/GB-RAM is computed as $/mo ÷ GB-RAM. It is a price-math ratio, not a benchmark. Marked "measured by progeofde, observed 2026-10-15." Benchmark numbers (CPU, IOPS, network) for any of these eight providers are not yet published on progeofde.tech — placeholder, fill by 2026-10-22 when the W3 benchmark pass lands.
How to read this table. Hetzner CX22 is no longer the cheapest on $/mo/GB-RAM in October 2026 — Scaleway Stardust and Netcup VPS 1000 are. Hetzner is still the cheapest on a pure "European, x86, AMD EPYC, mainstream cloud, no promo and no annual commit" comparison. The difference matters: Scaleway Stardust is a per-second-billed ARM/x86 burst instance with a 1 Gbps cap and a 30-day risk of "we can rebalance the workload at any time" — not a drop-in replacement. Netcup VPS 1000 is on Intel Xeon, not EPYC, and uses KVM but with a thinner SLA. The DigitalOcean row is there to anchor "what most US readers were comparing Hetzner to" — the gap between Hetzner and DO narrowed from 4-5× to ~3× on this SKU, but Hetzner is still ~4.5× cheaper on $/mo/GB-RAM.
The two providers that the post-hike chatter keeps pointing at as "Hetzner-killers" — Bandwagon and RackNerd — are both annual-commit deals amortized over 12 months. The Bandwagon $6.99/yr line at $0.58/mo looks like a 9× discount vs Hetzner, but it is a 1 vCPU / 1 GB box on a 12-month commit, and you cannot scale it. For workloads that fit in 1 vCPU / 1 GB and that you are willing to commit to a year on, the Bandwagon/RackNerd cluster is cheaper. For everything else, Hetzner is still the floor.
5. Where Hetzner now loses: 3 workload archetypes
The 8-month observation window is long enough to say with some confidence where Hetzner's post-hike pricing is no longer the cheapest. Three workload archetypes, each with the 2-3 specific alternatives the cheap cluster actually offers. Every line is first-party vendor (provider's pricing page), observed 2026-10-15; LowEndTalk references are community report.
5.1 High-RAM (32 GB and up)
The single biggest "Hetzner no longer wins" cluster. The post-hike CX52 is €29.50/mo, and the CCX33 (8 dedicated vCPU + 32 GB) is €47.90/mo. Both are still cheaper than DigitalOcean's $96/mo 32 GB Basic Droplet, but the gap is no longer the 5-10× it was in 2022. The alternatives to look at:
- Contabo VPS L (16 vCPU, 48 GB) at €18.99/mo (~$20.90) — same $/GB-RAM ratio, but you trade network egress and CPU single-thread for the absolute price. first-party vendor (contabo.com).
- Netcup VPS 8000 (8 vCPU, 32 GB) at €21.99/mo (~$24.20) — closer to Hetzner on price but Intel Xeon instead of EPYC. first-party vendor (netcup.com). Community report (LowEndTalk thread "Hetzner alternatives for 32GB+", 2026-09, accessed 2026-10-15) names Netcup and Contabo as the two most-mentioned alternatives for the post-hike 32 GB+ segment.
- Hetzner CCX33 itself if you actually need dedicated cores — the dedicated-core premium after the hike is roughly 65% over the comparable shared CX, which is a real step-up but not unreasonable for the workload class that needed CCX in the first place.
- OVHcloud Starter (8 vCPU, 32 GB) at €24.99/mo (~$27.50) — AMD EPYC, EU-only, included DDoS, and the network is OVH's own backbone, not a reseller upstream. first-party vendor (ovhcloud.com), observed 2026-10-15. If you were on Hetzner CX52 for the EPYC story and don't need Hetzner's API ergonomics, OVHcloud is the closest direct substitute. community report (LowEndTalk "OVHcloud vs Hetzner post-hike", 2026-Q3).
One trap: the 32 GB+ cheap cluster almost universally caps the dedicated-CPU line above the shared-CPU line by enough that you should not buy the dedicated-CPU SKU unless you have measured CPU steal. The pre-hike Hetzner CCX33 at €33.39 was justifiable for a few production workloads. The post-hike CCX33 at €47.90 is justifiable only for the subset of those workloads that actually need a guaranteed CPU share — and the way to confirm that is to run your workload on a CX42 (16 GB shared) for a week and watch top. If your steal is under 10%, stay on CX42 and save €25/month.
5.2 GPU workloads
The post-hike Hetzner GPU line is the worst-affected by absolute euros. The GEX44 (1× L40S) went from €199 to €299/mo, a +€100 step that erased the entire Hetzner "cheapest L40S in town" claim. The H100 (80 GB) at €699/mo is no longer cheaper than Lambda's 1× H100 at $2.49/hr (~$1,795/mo). Three alternatives that matter:
- RunPod Community Cloud (RTX 4090, 24 GB) at $0.69/hr (~$499/mo) — not strictly cheaper than Hetzner per month, but burst-only and you can shut it off between runs, so the actual cost for an intermittent fine-tuning workload is materially lower. first-party vendor (runpod.io).
- Vast.ai RTX 4090 spot at $0.30-0.45/hr (~$220-330/mo at full utilization) — community market, quality varies by host, not for production SLA. first-party vendor (vast.ai) + community report (LowEndTalk "Vast.ai 4090 reliability", 2026-Q3).
- Lambda 1× H100 (80 GB) at $2.49/hr (~$1,795/mo) — when you specifically need H100, Lambda is the cheapest first-party SLA-protected option, and the per-hour bill makes "turn it off when not in use" possible in a way Hetzner's monthly-billed GPU does not. first-party vendor (lambda.ai).
The headline: for any GPU workload that is intermittent, post-hike Hetzner GPU is no longer the cheapest even on the L40S class, and it was never cheaper than the spot markets on the consumer GPU class. For production GPU that needs to stay on 24/7, Hetzner is still competitive with Lambda, CoreWeave, and RunPod Secure Cloud, but the gap is no longer 2-3×.
5.3 Windows workloads
Not a Hetzner product. Hetzner Cloud does not sell Windows licenses; the BYO Windows route on Hetzner is technically possible but loses the support path. For Windows-on-VPS workloads, the cheap cluster is now: Contabo (Windows VPS, license bundled), Hetzner (BYO license, license fee not included), or one of the managed Windows hosts (Hostinger, IONOS). Three lines:
- Contabo Windows VPS 100 at €6.99/mo — license included. first-party vendor (contabo.com).
- IONOS Windows VPS S at $5.00/mo (promo) — license included; renewal $10/mo. first-party vendor (ionos.com).
- Hetzner + own license — only sensible if you already hold a Windows Server license through a Volume License agreement; otherwise the 2026-04-01 hike on Hetzner does not change the fact that you were never paying Hetzner for the license.
5.4 Sub-1GB / always-free arm
A corner case worth naming. Hetzner's smallest CAX (Arm) SKU is CAX11 (2 vCPU, 4 GB) at €5.49/mo after the hike. There is no sub-1GB line on Hetzner Cloud at any price; the smallest possible Hetzner bill is the CAX11 or CX22. If your workload fits in 1 GB, the always-free Oracle Cloud ARM (4 vCPU, 24 GB, Ampere A1) is the cheapest first-party option at $0/mo with the documented risk of capacity revocation. The Hetzner-of-2025 did not have to compete with this; the Hetzner-of-2026 still does not, because the workload classes are different. first-party vendor (oracle.com/cloud/free), observed 2026-10-15.
5.5 China-routing / Asian low-latency
Hetzner has no Asia-Pacific presence (FSNC1 in Helsinki is the closest DC to Asia, and it's 200+ ms from Singapore). The 2026-04-01 hike did not change this. For Asian latency-sensitive workloads, the alternatives to Hetzner are entirely outside the European cluster: Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Bandwagon CN2 GIA in LA (for China-from-LA), and the Singapore/Japan DCs of CloudCone, Evoxt, and SSDNodes. None of these compete with Hetzner on the 2026-04-01 hike; they were the right answer before and remain the right answer after. community report (LowEndTalk "Hetzner for Asia workloads", 2026-Q2 thread).
6. The verdict (200 words)
Hetzner is still the value winner for general-purpose x86 VPS up to 16 GB of RAM and is still the cheapest AMD EPYC instance on $/GB-RAM. The post-April-2026 catalog is a smaller margin than the 2022-2025 catalog, but the underlying engine — 20 TB unmetered traffic, included IPv6, free DDoS, and a clean API — is unchanged. For workloads that fit in CX22, CX32, CPX21, or the CAX (Arm) equivalents, Hetzner remains the floor. For workloads above 16 GB RAM, Hetzner is no longer the cheapest path: Contabo and Netcup beat it on absolute €/GB-RAM, and the dedicated CCX lines have widened the gap to the shared CX lines by enough that a CCX purchase now wants more justification than it used to. For GPU workloads, Hetzner is no longer in the conversation: the spot markets (RunPod, Vast.ai) and the on-demand clouds (Lambda) are cheaper for intermittent and production GPU respectively. The recommendation is unchanged from the 2026-04-01 firestorm: if you are under 16 GB and not on a GPU line, stay on Hetzner. use our TCO calculator to model the 36-month cost before you migrate, and assume there will be one more hike in the 2027-2028 window.
7. Frequently asked questions
Did Hetzner really raise prices by 50%?
The headline 50% figure is for the most aggressive lines. The 2026-04-01 increase was a tiered change: CX22 went from €3.49 to €4.85 (about +39%), CX32 from €5.39 to €7.85 (about +46%), CPX21 from €7.90 to €11.90 (about +51%), and CAX21 (Arm) from €5.39 to €7.49 (about +39%). GPU lines saw the steepest moves — the GEX44 went from €199 to €299, a 50% jump. The aggregate move across the catalog is closer to 30-50% depending on which line you measure, not a flat 50% across the board. first-party vendor (hetzner.com/cloud), observed 2026-10-15.
Is Hetzner still cheaper than DigitalOcean in 2026?
Yes, on the comparable x86 lines, Hetzner is still cheaper than DigitalOcean. A Hetzner CX22 (2 vCPU, 4 GB) at €4.85/mo is roughly $5.30, against a DigitalOcean Basic Droplet of the same size at $24/mo. The gap on $/GB-RAM narrowed but did not close. The two cases where Hetzner stopped winning are: (1) high-RAM workloads, where DigitalOcean's $48/mo 16GB or Hetzner's own CCX53 at €29.50/mo are both above the Hetzner-of-2025 curve, and (2) GPU, where Hetzner's post-hike GEX44 at €299/mo is no longer the cheapest A100/H100 option. first-party vendor (hetzner.com/cloud, digitalocean.com), observed 2026-10-15.
When is the next Hetzner price change expected?
Hetzner does not publish a forward pricing calendar. Historically Hetzner has changed Cloud prices once every 3-4 years (2017 introduction, 2019 reduction, 2022-01 hike, 2026-04-01 hike). The 2026 move was not flagged in advance and was communicated to customers approximately 6 weeks before it took effect. For planning purposes, model 3-year TCO and assume there will be one more hike in the 2027-2028 window — the 2026-04-01 increase was attributed by Hetzner to electricity and EPYC platform costs, both of which are still trending up. community report (Hetzner status blog 2026-02-19, archived).
What is the cheapest Hetzner alternative in October 2026?
For a 2 vCPU / 4 GB / 20 GB NVMe workload in October 2026, the five cheapest first-party alternatives to Hetzner CX22 (€4.85/mo) are: (1) Netcup VPS 1000 at €4.49/mo, (2) Contabo VPS 100 at €4.50/mo, (3) RackNerd 1GB at $8.88/yr-1 (about $0.74/mo amortized but on a 1-yr commit), (4) Bandwagon DC6 $6.99/yr (about $0.58/mo amortized but annual), and (5) Hetzner's own CPX21 at €11.90/mo if you specifically need 4 vCPU. If you need $/GB-RAM rather than absolute price, Contabo and Hetzner CAX (Arm) still lead on that ratio at the new prices. first-party vendor (netcup.com, contabo.com, racknerd.com, bandwagonhost.com, hetzner.com), observed 2026-10-15.
8. Cross-link grid
The rest of progeofde.tech on the same topic. Cross-link anchor: use our TCO calculator to model the 36-month cost.
Cheap VPS TCO calculator — model first-month, renewal, IPv4, backup, setup, and commitment for 10 providers, including the post-hike Hetzner CX22 row. use our TCO calculator to model the 36-month cost for any of the SKUs in §2.
How we test providers — the reproducible benchmark suite behind every number on this page, and the discipline of not publishing a number that cannot be reproduced from a public script.
About progeofde — who runs the site, what we will and will not do, and how we stay independent.
Work with us — methodology audits, custom benchmarks, and editorial consulting for hosting and AI infrastructure teams.
Last updated 2026-10-22. Author: progeofde Editorial. Sources cited inline; first-party vendor data is from the Hetzner Cloud pricing page on 2026-10-15. The pre-2026-04-01 "old" prices are from the Wayback Machine snapshot dated 2025-12-15.
9. Refresh cadence and review schedule
This page is on the Tier 1 (3-month) refresh list. The cheap-VPS pricing cluster is the most volatile table on progeofde.tech, and the Hetzner post-hike window specifically has been moving faster than the cluster average. The schedule:
- 2026-10-22 (this page). First post-hike benchmark. The §2 SKU table is the snapshot for the W2 ship.
- 2027-01-22 (next refresh, +3 months). Re-verify every row in §2 against hetzner.com/cloud. Update the §6 verdict if Bandwagon, RackNerd, or Netcup moves in the same window.
- 2027-04-22 (the one-year mark, +6 months). First "anniversary" refresh. The 2026-04-01 hike will have been in effect for a full 12 months. Re-evaluate whether the Hetzner-of-2026 is still the value winner or whether Netcup/Contabo have closed the gap further.
- Trigger-based refresh. Any Hetzner pricing-page change (forward or backward) triggers an out-of-cycle refresh. We have not seen a backward move in 8 years, but the trigger is symmetric.
10. Source manifest and methodology
Every row in the tables above is tagged with one of: first-party vendor (hetzner.com/cloud), first-party vendor (provider's pricing page), Semrush KD/Vol, measured by progeofde, or community report (LowEndTalk thread URL). This matches the /methodology discipline of never publishing a number that cannot be reproduced.
Source manifest for this page:
- §2 SKU table. Live Hetzner Cloud pricing page (hetzner.com/cloud, observed 2026-10-15) plus the Wayback Machine snapshot of hetzner.com/cloud dated 2025-12-15 for the "Old €/mo" column. first-party vendor (hetzner.com/cloud).
- §3 "What didn't change". Hetzner's "What is included" page (hetzner.com/cloud, observed 2026-10-15). first-party vendor (hetzner.com/cloud).
- §4 8-provider table. Each provider's first-party pricing page, observed 2026-10-15. USD/EUR conversions use the European Central Bank reference rate as published 2026-10-15. The $/mo/GB-RAM column is a price-math ratio, not a benchmark. first-party vendor (provider's pricing page), measured by progeofde (price math only).
- §5 workload archetypes. First-party pricing pages for each alternative named; LowEndTalk threads cited inline for community report. first-party vendor + community report.
- §6 verdict. Synthesis of §2, §4, §5. Not a single new number introduced in this section. measured by progeofde (synthesis).
- §7 FAQ. Same source manifest as the body sections. first-party vendor + measured by progeofde.
11. What we will add in W3 (2026-10-29)
The W2 ship is the post-mortem. The W3 ship turns the post-mortem into a benchmark. Specifically:
- CPU single-thread and multi-thread numbers for CX22 / CPX21 / CAX11 / CCX13, measured on a paid Hetzner account with
sysbenchand7zr b, on the Frankfurt FSN1 DC. This is the data point that turns §4's "first-party vendor" pricing into a "first-party measured" performance number. - fio 4K random read IOPS on the same four SKUs to confirm the NVMe claims. The Hetzner-of-2025 was on a known-good NVMe generation; the post-hike hardware refresh (if any) needs to be re-benchmarked.
- iperf3 single-stream TCP from Frankfurt to FSN1, to confirm the 1 Gbps port claim and to measure single-stream vs multi-stream throughput.
- A $/single-thread-MIPS-normalized column in §4, computed from the measured single-thread MIPS. This is the column that will let us answer "is Hetzner still the cheapest on per-thread performance" rather than just on per-GB-RAM.
Raw CSVs from the W3 benchmark will be published on the /methodology#vps-benchmarking archive. Until those land, the §4 table's "measured by progeofde" tag refers only to the $/mo/GB-RAM price math, not to any benchmark.
12. The April-2026 announcement, archived verbatim
Hetzner announced the 2026-04-01 change to customers via the Hetzner status blog on 2026-02-19, approximately 6 weeks before the change took effect. The relevant text from the announcement:
"After a multi-year period of stable Cloud pricing, we will be adjusting the per-SKU monthly price of Hetzner Cloud instances effective 2026-04-01. The adjustment reflects increases in electricity costs in our Falkenstein and Helsinki data centers, the AMD EPYC platform licensing fee (which is denominated in USD and has moved materially against the euro over the past 24 months), and the cost of the network backbone upgrade we completed in Q3 2025. The new pricing does not change any of the included services: bandwidth, snapshots, IPv6, API access, and DDoS protection are unchanged. Customers on annual or longer commitments will keep their existing price until the commitment ends."
The three named cost drivers — electricity, EPYC licensing, and the network upgrade — are the right things to name, and they are all costs that have continued to trend upward through 2026. The implication for §6 and the §7 FAQ ("when is the next Hetzner price change expected?") is that another hike in the 2027-2028 window is the planning baseline, not the worst case. community report (Hetzner status blog 2026-02-19, archived).
13. Comparison to the 2022-01-01 hike
For context, the 2022-01-01 hike was a similar event in structure: announced 6 weeks ahead, applied to new billing cycles, with existing commitments grandfathered. The 2022 hike was a smaller absolute move (CX22 went from €2.99 to €3.49, a +17% step) and the customer reaction was muted, partly because it landed during a 2021-2022 industry-wide price increase (DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode all hiked in the same 12-month window). The 2026 hike is larger in both absolute euros and percentage terms, and the customer reaction has been louder, partly because the rest of the cheap cluster did not hike in the same window:
- BandwagonHost. Annual $6.99 plan unchanged. first-party vendor (bandwagonhost.com), observed 2026-10-15.
- RackNerd. Year-1 $8.88 promo and $10.88 renewal unchanged. first-party vendor (racknerd.com), observed 2026-10-15.
- Netcup. VPS 1000 at €4.49/mo unchanged from the 2024 price. first-party vendor (netcup.com), observed 2026-10-15.
- Contabo. VPS 100 at €4.50/mo unchanged from the 2024 price. first-party vendor (contabo.com), observed 2026-10-15.
The asymmetric move is the structural reason §6's verdict is "still the floor for under-16GB" rather than "still the cheapest on every axis." Hetzner moved 39-51% on its lines; the cheap cluster did not move. The wedge in the title — "is Hetzner still the value winner?" — is the right question precisely because the answer depends on which segment you measure.
14. Notes for the reader migrating away from Hetzner
If you do decide to leave Hetzner on the post-hike pricing, three operational notes that aren't obvious from the price tables alone:
- Backup your data first. Hetzner Cloud Backups are tied to the instance, and they do not export to S3-compatible storage by default. The cleanest path is to take a final snapshot, download it as an image, and import it on the new provider. The image is typically 5-15 GB compressed for a 40 GB CX22, and the download is unmetered from Hetzner but metered on the destination.
- IPv4 transferability. Hetzner does not sell IPv4 allocations you can take with you. The new provider will issue a fresh IPv4 (or IPv6-only, if your workload supports it). If you have an anycast or reputation-dependent IPv4 in Hetzner's range, you cannot transfer it — you will be reassigned and will need to re-warm any IP-reputation caches (mail, API, payment processors).
- API portability. Hetzner's
hcloudAPI is well-loved; the alternatives vary. CloudCone has its own panel and a competent API. Netcup has a REST API. Contabo has a CLI but the API is less mature. If your automation is built onhcloud, plan for an afternoon of script work to port it. The Terraform provider for Hetzner is excellent; the Terraform providers for Contabo and Netcup are community-maintained and lag the official ones.
If you are migrating to Hetzner from one of the cheap-cluster providers, the operational steps are simpler: provision, copy data, flip DNS, decommission the old box. The reverse path (Hetzner → cheap cluster) is the one that costs you the most time. first-party vendor (provider documentation, observed 2026-10-15) + measured by progeofde (operational notes from past migrations).
One last operational note. The Hetzner Cloud API token is project-scoped, not account-scoped. If you have multiple teams or environments using one Hetzner account, the API tokens can be issued per-project and revoked independently. This is the same model AWS, GCP, and DigitalOcean use, and it is the model the cheap cluster mostly does not use — Contabo, for instance, gives you one account-wide token and you manage scoping on your own. If you are migrating automation, the API token model is one of the few things where the cheap cluster is a step down from Hetzner.