AWS charges you 80$/month for what Hetzner gives you for 5$.
The pitch
Hetzner is a German hosting provider with data centers in Europe and the US. They sell actual servers at actual prices — no usage-based billing surprises, no egress fees, no pricing calculator that requires a PhD.
What you get:
- Honest pricing. A VPS with 4 vCPUs, 8GB RAM, and 160GB SSD runs about €7/month. Try that on AWS.
- No egress fees. 20TB of traffic included. AWS would charge you 1,800$ for that.
- Dedicated servers available. Need real hardware? They have that too, starting around €40/month.
- EU data residency. Data centers in Germany and Finland. GDPR compliance without extra paperwork.
The math
A typical production setup for a small-to-medium app:
| Component | Hetzner | AWS |
|---|---|---|
| App server (4 vCPU, 8GB) | €7/mo | ~70$/mo |
| Database server | €7/mo | ~50$/mo (RDS) |
| Traffic (5TB) | included | ~450$/mo |
| Total | ~€15/mo | ~570$/mo |
That’s not a typo.
When it fits
- You’re a startup watching your burn rate
- You need predictable monthly costs
- Your users are in Europe (or you’re fine with US-East)
- You don’t need 30+ AWS services glued together
When it doesn’t
- You need presence in Asia-Pacific or South America
- You’re locked into AWS-specific services (Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS)
- Your compliance requirements mandate a specific cloud provider