Hetzner

Hetzner is a German hosting company known for strong price-performance on cloud servers and dedicated hardware. This Hetzner cloud overview explains its product range, billing model and the trade-offs that come with a lean, infrastructure-first provider. It is popular with developers, small businesses and self-hosting enthusiasts who are comfortable managing their own software stack.

Two sides of Hetzner #

Hetzner runs two related but distinct businesses, each with its own console:

• Hetzner Cloud, managed in the Cloud Console, offers virtual servers and supporting services that you create and delete in seconds, billed by usage.
• Hetzner Robot manages dedicated root servers, colocation and Storage Boxes, which are rented on a monthly basis.

Hetzner operates its own data centers in Germany (Nuremberg and Falkenstein) and Finland (Helsinki). Hetzner Cloud also has locations in the United States and Singapore, though some products and server types are only available in the European sites.

Core services #

Cloud servers also support snapshots, automated backups, primary and floating IPs, and cloud-init for configuring servers at creation time. There is no managed Kubernetes or managed database product in Hetzner Cloud, although the community maintains well-known tools for running Kubernetes on it.

How pricing works #

Hetzner’s reputation rests largely on its pricing model, which is simple to follow:

• Cloud servers are billed hourly up to a monthly cap. You pay while a server exists, whether it is running or stopped, so delete servers you no longer need.
• Traffic: cloud servers include an outbound traffic allowance, with extra traffic billed per terabyte. The included amount differs between European and non-European locations.
• Dedicated servers have a monthly price, sometimes with a one-time setup fee. Server Auction machines typically have no setup fee.
• Add-ons such as backups, snapshots, IPv4 addresses, volumes and load balancers are billed separately.

Prices have been adjusted from time to time, and some differ by location, so check the official price lists before planning a budget.

Where it fits well #

• Cost-sensitive production workloads where you control the full stack: web apps, APIs, databases you administer yourself and background workers.
• CI runners, build servers and compute-heavy batch jobs, where raw performance per unit of cost matters most.
• Self-hosted tools such as Git services, monitoring stacks, chat servers and analytics.
• European hosting for teams that want data stored in Germany or Finland.

For a practical first deployment, follow our guide to Hetzner Cloud servers, firewalls, snapshots and a sensible first setup.

Things to consider #

Hetzner offers infrastructure rather than a platform. You manage operating systems, databases, backups and scaling yourself, which takes time and skill. If you need many managed services, pair Hetzner with external services or consider a larger provider.

Support is focused on infrastructure issues such as hardware faults and network problems, not on debugging your application. Hetzner also has fewer locations than the large clouds, so users far from Europe, the United States or Singapore may see higher latency. For those audiences, a CDN in front of your servers can help.

Account review is strict. Hetzner checks new sign-ups to prevent abuse and may ask for identity verification before activating an account or increasing limits. Provide accurate information and respond through the official process.

New cloud projects have default limits on resources such as the number of servers. You can request a higher limit through the Cloud Console. Outgoing mail ports are also blocked by default on cloud servers; Hetzner describes the conditions for unblocking them in its documentation.

Getting started the official way #

1. Register on the official Hetzner website with accurate personal or company details. Complete any verification Hetzner requests.
2. Enable two-factor authentication on your account.
3. Create a project in the Cloud Console, add an SSH key and create a Firewall before your first server.
4. Use project members and API tokens with limited scope rather than sharing your login.
5. Consult the Hetzner documentation for product details, networking guides and API references.

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