Provider comparison
Hetzner vs AWS
Hetzner Online is a German provider founded in 1997, operating datacentres in Germany (Nuremberg, Falkenstein) and Finland (Helsinki). It is an IaaS-first provider: compute, storage, and dedicated servers at prices that are structurally lower than hyperscalers, with a deliberately limited managed-service catalogue. This page names what it does and does not offer compared to AWS.
Prices and service capabilities change. Verify figures against current provider documentation before committing to a project budget.
Who is Hetzner?
Hetzner Online GmbH is a German company, founded in 1997 in Gunzenhausen, and remains privately owned by the Hetzner family. All datacentres are in the EU (Germany and Finland). There is no US parent and no CLOUD Act exposure. It publishes list prices openly and has no egress fees for traffic between its datacentres.
Its cloud product (Hetzner Cloud, launched 2017) offers compute instances, block storage, load balancers, and managed Kubernetes (Hetzner Managed Kubernetes). The managed-service catalogue does not include managed databases, serverless compute, or a global CDN. Teams that need those build them on top of Hetzner compute or supplement from another provider.
Side-by-side: key dimensions
| Dimension | Hetzner | AWS | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| EU data residency | All regions in EU (DE and FI) | EU regions available (8 in EU as of Jan 2025) | Both offer EU residency |
| Legal sovereignty (CLOUD Act) | German entity, no US parent, no CLOUD Act exposure | US parent, CLOUD Act applies | Hetzner has legal sovereignty |
| Compute on-demand pricing (general purpose) | From EUR 0.007/h (CX22, 2 vCPU, 4 GB) | From USD 0.052/h (t3.medium, 2 vCPU, 4 GB, eu-central-1) | Hetzner significantly cheaper on entry compute |
| Dedicated / bare metal servers | Root servers from EUR 41/month (AX41-NVMe) | Dedicated Hosts (instance-type pricing); no bare metal catalogue | Hetzner has a strong dedicated server offering |
| Object / block storage pricing | Object Storage EUR 0.012/GB/month, Volume EUR 0.048/GB/month | S3 USD 0.023/GB/month; EBS gp3 USD 0.088/GB/month | Hetzner cheaper on both storage types |
| Managed Kubernetes | Managed Kubernetes (EUR 0.09/h per cluster) | EKS (USD 0.10/h per cluster) | Both viable; similar control-plane pricing |
| Managed relational database | None (no managed DB; self-host on compute) | RDS (5 engines), Aurora, DynamoDB | AWS only |
| Serverless / FaaS | None | Lambda, Step Functions, EventBridge | AWS only |
| Global CDN | None (no CDN product) | CloudFront (600+ PoPs globally) | AWS only |
| Network egress pricing | 20 TB/month included per instance; EUR 1/TB beyond | From USD 0.09/GB (USD 90/TB) to internet | Hetzner far cheaper on egress |
Where Hetzner is a credible replacement for AWS
Hetzner is the default choice when price is the primary constraint and the workload does not require managed databases, serverless, or a global CDN. A containerised application running on Kubernetes with PostgreSQL self-hosted on a dedicated database server costs one-fifth to one-tenth the equivalent AWS bill at comparable compute specs.
The price difference is largest on egress. Hetzner includes 20 TB/month of network traffic per CX22 instance; AWS charges from USD 0.09/GB (roughly USD 90/TB) for data leaving to the internet. For media, backups, or any read-heavy workload with significant outbound traffic, the Hetzner cost structure is categorically different.
Hetzner is also the strongest choice when you need a physical server in the EU that is not a cloud tenant. Its dedicated server line is priced and managed transparently; there is no cloud markup or minimum-commitment SKU complexity.
Where the gaps are real
Hetzner has no managed database. Every database you run is one you manage: patching, backups, failover, point-in-time recovery. For a three-person team shipping a product, this is a meaningful operational overhead versus RDS or Cloud SQL. For a team with dedicated infrastructure engineering capacity, it is standard.
There is no CDN, no serverless, no managed message queue, no managed container registry with scanning, and no ML/AI managed services. Hetzner is deliberately an IaaS provider. If your application's architecture depends on any of these as managed services, you supplement from another provider or adopt open-source equivalents hosted on Hetzner compute.
Hetzner's load balancer and network products are functional but basic. There is no equivalent to AWS Global Accelerator, Transit Gateway, or Direct Connect. For complex multi-region or hybrid network topologies, AWS has a much richer networking layer.
Honest limits of this comparison
Hetzner's SLA for cloud instances is 99.9%. AWS publishes per-service SLAs that are often higher (EC2 99.99%, S3 99.99%). For workloads with contractual uptime obligations, compare SLAs directly rather than assuming equivalence.
Hetzner has no presence outside Europe. If your roadmap includes serving users in North America, Asia-Pacific or Latin America from first-party infrastructure, Hetzner is a regional leg, not a global platform.
Common questions
- Is Hetzner suitable for production workloads?
- Yes. Hetzner is used in production by many European SaaS companies and infrastructure teams. The compute and network are stable and well-operated. The constraint is the managed-service catalogue: you run your own databases, queues and CDN. If your team can operate those, Hetzner is a serious production platform.
- Does Hetzner have ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification?
- Hetzner holds ISO 27001 certification. It does not hold SOC 2 (a US-audit framework). For European regulated workloads, ISO 27001 is the relevant standard; check hetzner.com/unternehmen/certifications/ for the current scope.
- Can I run a GDPR-compliant workload on Hetzner?
- Hetzner is a German entity, processes and stores data in Germany and Finland, and publishes a Data Processing Agreement. It has no US parent and no CLOUD Act exposure. The usual GDPR responsibility framework applies: Hetzner is your processor, you are the controller.