Hetzner Price Hike: What Alternatives Actually Exist in 2026

Hetzner raised prices on existing customers in late 2025. The increase was up to 38% on some plans. The community reaction was loud. The alternatives are not as good as they look. The right answer depends on your specific use case. This is the honest comparison of Hetzner, the alternatives, and when to switch. (This is a follow-up to an earlier piece on the same topic, updated with current pricing and additional options.)

What Hetzner Did in Detail

Hetzner announced price increases on existing customers in the EU and US in Q4 2025. The increases ranged from 5% to 38% depending on the plan. The CX22 (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM) used to be $4.50/month and is now $5.30/month. The CPX21 (3 vCPU, 4GB RAM) used to be $7.90/month and is now $10.40/month. The CCX13 (2 dedicated vCPU, 16GB RAM) used to be $27/month and is now $35/month. The reaction on Hacker News, Reddit, and Twitter was immediate. The most-cited complaint: existing customers were not given a way to lock in old pricing. The most-cited praise: Hetzner is still cheaper than AWS, GCP, and Azure. The most-cited question: should I move to a different provider? The answer depends on what you use Hetzner for.

The Hetzner Math, Updated

A Hetzner CX22 (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM) used to be $4.50/month. The new price is $5.30/month. The increase is 18%. The same machine on AWS Lightsail is $10/month. On Vultr is $12/month. On DigitalOcean is $12/month. On Hetzner is $5.30/month. Hetzner is still 50-65% cheaper than the alternatives. The 18% increase does not change the cost ranking. Hetzner is still the cheapest credible cloud provider in the EU and US markets. The price increase is annoying. The value proposition is intact. The right answer for most users is to stay on Hetzner and accept the increase. The right answer for users with high switching costs is to stay. The right answer for users with low switching costs is to evaluate alternatives.

The Alternatives That Are Not as Good as They Look

OVH is the most-cited Hetzner alternative. OVH is slightly cheaper than Hetzner for some plans. OVH is a French company with data centers in Europe. The network quality is good. The control panel is mediocre. The support is slow. The community is smaller. OVH is the right answer if you are in Europe and need data residency. For US customers, the latency is higher. For customers who need US data centers, OVH is a downgrade. Netcup is a German provider with similar pricing to Hetzner. The control panel is bare. The network is reliable. The community is small. Netcup is the right answer if you are in Europe and Hetzner is unavailable. For US customers, the latency is a problem. BuyVM is a smaller provider with very competitive pricing. The network is shared. The reliability is variable. BuyVM is the right answer if you are running low-stakes workloads and want the absolute lowest price. For mission-critical workloads, the risk is real.

What the Alternatives Are Good For

Three legitimate alternatives to Hetzner. DigitalOcean for simplicity. The control panel is the best in the industry. The pricing is 2x Hetzner. The support is responsive. The community is large. DigitalOcean is the right answer if you value the user experience over the price. Vultr for global presence. Vultr has data centers in more countries than Hetzner. The pricing is 2x Hetzner. The control panel is good. The network is reliable. Vultr is the right answer if you need data centers in regions Hetzner does not cover. Cloudflare R2 + Workers for serverless workloads. The pricing is essentially free for small workloads. The cold start latency is real. The debugging is harder. Cloudflare is the right answer if your workload fits the serverless model. The wrong answer if you need a traditional VPS.

What Migrating Actually Costs

The migration cost is not zero. Even for a single VPS, the migration involves: provisioning the new VPS, installing the OS and dependencies, migrating the data, updating DNS, testing the new server, decommissioning the old one. For a single VPS, this is a 2-4 hour project. For a multi-server setup, this is a 2-5 day project. The right answer is to factor the migration cost into the savings. For a $5/month Hetzner VPS migrating to a $4/month BuyVM VPS, the first-year savings is $12. The migration cost is 4 hours of your time. If your time is worth more than $3/hour, the migration is not worth it for the savings. The right answer for most users is to stay on Hetzner and accept the price increase. The right answer for users with complex multi-server setups is to migrate. The right answer for users with simple single-VPS workloads is to stay.

The Real Decision

The decision to leave Hetzner is not about the price increase. The decision is about the relationship. Hetzner raised prices on existing customers without giving them a way to lock in old pricing. That is a signal. The signal is “Hetzner thinks their customers have low switching costs.” The signal is correct. For most workloads, the cost of switching is a weekend. If you have a low switching cost, the price increase is a one-time 18% hit. If you have a high switching cost (proprietary control panel, complex infrastructure), the price increase is a 5-10% annual hit (Hetzner will likely raise prices again). The decision is whether to pay the 18% once or the 5-10% annually. The right answer depends on your infrastructure. For most small VPS workloads, the 18% is worth paying. For complex multi-server setups, the migration is worth doing.

Final Thoughts

Hetzner is still the cheapest credible cloud provider. The price increase was annoying. The community reaction was loud. The alternatives are not as good as they look. The decision to switch depends on your specific use case. For most small VPS workloads, the right answer is to stay on Hetzner and accept the 18% increase. For complex multi-server setups, the right answer is to migrate. For serverless workloads, the right answer is Cloudflare. For the absolute lowest price, the right answer is BuyVM or Netcup. The decision is not ideological. The decision is operational. The free market is working. Hetzner raised prices. Some customers leave. The pricing reflects the new market. That is how it should work.