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ProvidersVPS · Checked 2026-10-29

Hetzner Cloud

German VPS provider: fixed-size virtual machines from €6.49, billed hourly but capped at the monthly price, with a powered-off server still billed in full.

Short answer: One always-on personal agent (2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 20 GiB) costs about $23.59 a month here, the 5th cheapest of the 14 providers that run it as described. The AI model adds about $14.70 a month on top (GLM 5.3, 30 requests a day at 40k tokens each, median zero-retention price; from $6.84 at the cheapest host). Fits well: An always-on agent on a small machine: CPX22 at $22.99 + $0.60 IPv4 covers Hermes, OpenClaw, a chat bot, n8n or an MCP server, with 20 TB of EU traffic included.

www.hetzner.com/cloud/19 providersSources linked

Hetzner Cloud sells fixed-size virtual machines (vCPUs, RAM and NVMe disk in one bundle) in six data centres across Germany, Finland, the US and Singapore. It is an ordinary Linux server product: root, SSH, any kernel module you can load, Docker if you install it, and a monthly price cap with an hourly rate underneath.

It is the reference plain VPS rather than a sandbox service. There is no prompt endpoint, no memory snapshot, no idle sleep, no per-second meter and no session limit. You create a server from the console, the API or the hcloud CLI, and it exists until you delete it.

Three plan families: Cost-Optimized (CX on Intel/AMD and CAX on Ampere, shared, older hardware), Regular Performance (CPX, shared, current AMD) and General Purpose (CCX, dedicated vCPUs). At this check the whole Cost-Optimized family was marked not available for ordering, leaving Regular Performance as the cheapest buyable option.

At a glance

Who it is forPeople who want a cheap, ordinary, always-on Linux server in the EU (or the US or Singapore) and are happy to run the operating system, the agent and the backups themselves. It is the natural first choice for a personal agent, a chat bot, n8n or a small MCP server that must never sleep.
IsolationA full virtual machine per server with its own kernel, disk and IP: root, Docker inside, real SSH and live migration of a failing host with under a second of disruption. Nested virtualisation is explicitly not available, there is no GPU, and the hypervisor is never named in the docs.
SizesFixed plans only, no custom CPU/RAM split. Regular Performance (AMD, shared): 1–16 vCPU, 1–32 GB RAM, 20–640 GB NVMe. General Purpose (dedicated vCPU): 2–48 vCPU, 8–192 GB, 80–960 GB. Cost-Optimized: 2–16 vCPU, 4–32 GB, 40–320 GB, currently not orderable. Extra disk comes from Volumes (10 GB–10 TB, up to 16 per server), not from the plan.
A personal agent hereAbout $23.59 a month for one always-on 2 vCPU / 4 GiB machine (CPX22: 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 80 GiB), before the AI model. Change the numbers
Recommended in

Fits well, fits badly

Our reading of the sourced material on this page, not a provider claim.

Fits well

  • An always-on agent on a small machine: CPX22 at $22.99 + $0.60 IPv4 covers Hermes, OpenClaw, a chat bot, n8n or an MCP server, with 20 TB of EU traffic included.
  • A coding box for one developer: CPX32 gives 4 vCPU / 8 GB / 160 GB for $41.99 a month, with the repository safe on the disk between sessions.
  • EU data residency: Nuremberg, Falkenstein and Helsinki, German law, ISO 27001 and BSI C5, and a DPA you can sign online.
  • Anything that needs a real kernel, root, Docker, arbitrary ports or a stable public IP.

Fits badly

  • Bursty work: a powered-off server bills exactly like a running one, so a three-hours-a-day agent costs the same as a 24-hour one.
  • Many short runs: each server is rounded up to a whole hour, so 1,000 ten-minute tasks cost 1,000 hours.
  • Live resizing: a plan change needs the server powered off and cannot shrink the disk.
  • Anything that needs a GPU, nested virtualisation, a memory snapshot, an idle sleep, a hard spend cap or SSO.

How it bills

ModelPer-server hourly rate with a monthly price cap, plus separately billed Primary IPs, Volumes, Snapshots, Backups, Load Balancers and Object Storage. The account currency (EUR or USD) is fixed at signup.
MeterHourly, rounded up to a whole hour per server, and capped at that server's monthly price. CPX22 is $0.0368/h and $22.99/mo; the cap therefore binds at about 624 hours.
While stoppedNothing changes. A powered-off server keeps its disk, its IP and its full bill until it is deleted: "you pay for a server that has completed the creation process for as long as it exists, regardless of whether it is turned on or not".
Plan feeNo plan and no fee. The monthly figure is a cap on usage, not a subscription: a server deleted after 90 hours bills 90 hours at the hourly rate.
MinimumNo free tier and no signup credit. A payment method is required at signup, and the first limit increase is only available after a month and a paid invoice.

How Hetzner Cloud lets you try before paying is on Trials and free tiers.

Where it stands out

  • A cheap always-on 4 vCPU machine with 160 GB of disk: $41.99 a month plus $0.60 for an IPv4.
  • A real server: own kernel, root, Docker, SSH, any TCP port, static IP and 20 TB of EU egress included.
  • EU residency with ISO 27001, BSI C5, German law and an online DPA.
  • Six locations across four network zones, with the same plans in Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki.
  • Snapshots and volumes as first-class products, and free firewalls, private networks and DNS.
  • A complete, documented REST API with an official CLI and Go/Python libraries.

Using it without writing code

DashboardYes: the Hetzner Console creates servers, IPs, volumes, firewalls, networks, load balancers, snapshots and backups, with graphs, an Activity feed, per-project members and cost alerts.
Without codeYes for the machine itself. Choosing a plan, a location, an image, an SSH key and a firewall is all clicking, and one-click apps (Docker CE, Coolify, Nextcloud, WordPress, GitLab and others) are preselected from the console. Everything after that — the agent, the database, the certificate — is a terminal.
SignupA payment method (card, SEPA direct debit for EUR accounts, bank transfer or PayPal) and an email address. No free tier, no automatic credit, and new accounts start with a small project limit that is only raised after a month and a paid invoice.
Docs and supportDozens of focused pages under docs.hetzner.com/cloud plus a complete OpenAPI reference at docs.hetzner.cloud, an open-source CLI, Go and Python libraries, community tutorials and a 24/7 support desk.

Capability checklist

Every capability the guide checks, with the catch where Hetzner Cloud's version falls short. Compare all providers

Isolation

Sizes and regions

Lifecycle

Snapshots and forks

Storage

Idle and waking

Reaching it

Custom domains

  • Your own domain Yes
  • Automatic HTTPS With a catch Managed Let's Encrypt certificates belong to the paid Load Balancer (from €7.49 a month); a plain server needs Caddy, certbot or an app's own script.

Outbound network

Keys and secrets

Ways to drive it

Built-in agents

Teams and accounts

Billing models

Trials and free tiers

The company

The company

From the profile's company section: the legal entity, who funds it, and what a buyer can check before signing.

Legal entity

Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany; Ansbach HRB 6089; VAT DE 812871812. Management: Martin Hetzner, Stephan Konvickova, Günther Müller.

“Hetzner Online GmbH” hetzner.com docs-confirmed

Age and scale

A German IT company founded in 1997, one of Europe's largest hosting providers, with its own data-centre parks in Nuremberg, Falkenstein and Helsinki plus Singapore and the USA.

“Hetzner is a German IT company and one of Europe's largest and most trusted internet service providers, founded in 1997.” hetzner.com docs-confirmed

Ownership and funding

No parent company, stock listing or venture round is published; Martin Hetzner is CEO and the company is headquartered in Gunzenhausen.

“CEO: Martin Hetzner, Stephan Konvickova, Günther Müller” hetzner.com docs-confirmed

Certification

ISO/IEC 27001:2022, BSI C5 Type 2, classified as a KRITIS operator under §8a BSIG, and PCI DSS for card handling. No SOC 2, by choice.

“We have ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification.” docs.hetzner.com docs-confirmed

Status and SLA

A public status page and a 99.9% monthly availability SLA per Cloud server, refunded as Cloud Credit.

“We will make commercially reasonable efforts to ensure a monthly availability of 99.9% for every Cloud Server.” docs.hetzner.com docs-confirmed

Data protection

A Data Processing Agreement can be created online, with technical and organisational measures in Appendix 2; the audit protocol is available in the customer account.

“We provide an overview of our Technical and organizational measures ("TOMs" for short) in the Appendix 2 of our Data Processing Agreement.” docs.hetzner.com docs-confirmed

Caveats and contradictions

Shown as the research found them. A contradiction means the provider's own pages disagree; an open question means the answer is not published.

  1. 01

    A stopped server is not a paused server Open question

    There is no pause, sleep or hibernate. A powered-off server keeps its disk and its IP but also its full monthly charge; the documented way to stop paying is to snapshot and delete, which loses memory, processes and the IP.

  2. 02

    Hourly rounding punishes short runs Open question

    Usage is rounded up to a whole hour per server, so any task under an hour costs a full hour: 1,000 ten-minute tasks bill 1,000 server-hours, not 167.

  3. 03

    The public IPv4 is billed separately Open question

    Hetzner bills the server and its public IPv4 separately: $0.60 a month or $0.001 an hour per IPv4, and IPv6 is free. The plan pages' monthly price includes one IPv4; the costs on this site include it too, so an IPv6-only server is $0.60 a month cheaper.

  4. 04

    The cheapest family is out of stock Open question

    Every Cost-Optimized plan (CX23 at €5.99 and up) carries a 'not available' badge and the overview says 'Currently not available', while the price API still reports active: true. The guide should treat Regular Performance as the buyable entry point until a recheck says otherwise.

  5. 05

    Two first-party price lists, and marketing includes the IPv4 Contradiction

    Hetzner publishes separate EUR and USD lists (the USD one is about 1.18× the EUR one) and the account currency is fixed at signup. Plan cards add one Primary IPv4 to the server price; the API does not.

    “€ 19.99 per month, excl. VAT”
    Hetzner Cloudpricing-page
    “"monthly":{"EUR":"19.49","USD":"22.99"}”
    Hetzner Cloudpricing-page

Sources

The three shared workloads

List-price illustrations from the calculator, not quotes. Prices checked 29 October 2026.

A · 1,000 short tasks

$37.80

CPX22: 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 80 GiB (plan: Pay as you go)

  • Machine time (CPX22)1,000 runs × 1 h each, rounded up × $0.0368$36.80
  • Public IPv41,000 runs × 1 h × $0.001$1.00
  • No plan and no fee: each server is billed from creation until deletion, at the hourly rate up to its own monthly cap.
  • These are Hetzner's own USD prices for the EU network zone (Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki), read from the price API the plan pages use. US and Singapore plans are priced separately and higher.
  • A public IPv4 is billed separately at $0.60 a month or $0.001 an hour per server, and the calculator includes it. A server with only an IPv6 address (free) costs $0.60 a month less.
  • Each server's usage is rounded up to a whole hour, so a ten-minute task on its own server bills a full hour. The calculator rounds each task up the same way.
  • A powered-off server is billed in full until it is deleted: there is no pause, sleep or cheaper stopped-storage rate. billedWhileStopped applies the running hourly rate to stopped hours.
  • The bill is capped at each server's monthly price, which binds at about 624 hours at these rates. shape.monthly applies that cap to machines mode.
  • Snapshots, backups, volumes, Floating IPs and load balancers are separate products and are not priced by this card. Hetzner no longer publishes a snapshot rate on its live pricing pages: the API exposes an image price per GB-month (and a 20% backup surcharge) but needs a token to read, and the last figure visible on a legacy page variant was €0.011/$0.0130 per GB-month, unverified today.
  • Cost-Optimized plans (CX23 at €5.99 and up) are listed but marked not available for ordering at this check, so they are not modelled here.

B · One always-on box

$42.59

CPX32: 4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 160 GiB (plan: Pay as you go)

  • Machine time (CPX32)730 h × $0.0673$49.13
  • Monthly price cap1 × $41.99 a month−$7.14
  • Public IPv41 × min($0.60, 730 h × $0.001)$0.60
  • No plan and no fee: each server is billed from creation until deletion, at the hourly rate up to its own monthly cap.
  • These are Hetzner's own USD prices for the EU network zone (Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki), read from the price API the plan pages use. US and Singapore plans are priced separately and higher.
  • A public IPv4 is billed separately at $0.60 a month or $0.001 an hour per server, and the calculator includes it. A server with only an IPv6 address (free) costs $0.60 a month less.
  • Each server's usage is rounded up to a whole hour, so a ten-minute task on its own server bills a full hour. The calculator rounds each task up the same way.
  • A powered-off server is billed in full until it is deleted: there is no pause, sleep or cheaper stopped-storage rate. billedWhileStopped applies the running hourly rate to stopped hours.
  • The bill is capped at each server's monthly price, which binds at about 624 hours at these rates. shape.monthly applies that cap to machines mode.
  • Snapshots, backups, volumes, Floating IPs and load balancers are separate products and are not priced by this card. Hetzner no longer publishes a snapshot rate on its live pricing pages: the API exposes an image price per GB-month (and a 20% backup surcharge) but needs a token to read, and the last figure visible on a legacy page variant was €0.011/$0.0130 per GB-month, unverified today.
  • Cost-Optimized plans (CX23 at €5.99 and up) are listed but marked not available for ordering at this check, so they are not modelled here.

C · Three hours a day

$23.59

CPX22: 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 80 GiB (plan: Pay as you go)

  • Machine time (CPX22)90 h × $0.0368$3.31
  • Stopped, still billed640 h × $0.0368$23.55
  • Monthly price cap1 × $22.99 a month−$3.87
  • Public IPv41 × min($0.60, 730 h × $0.001)$0.60
  • No plan and no fee: each server is billed from creation until deletion, at the hourly rate up to its own monthly cap.
  • These are Hetzner's own USD prices for the EU network zone (Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki), read from the price API the plan pages use. US and Singapore plans are priced separately and higher.
  • A public IPv4 is billed separately at $0.60 a month or $0.001 an hour per server, and the calculator includes it. A server with only an IPv6 address (free) costs $0.60 a month less.
  • Each server's usage is rounded up to a whole hour, so a ten-minute task on its own server bills a full hour. The calculator rounds each task up the same way.
  • A powered-off server is billed in full until it is deleted: there is no pause, sleep or cheaper stopped-storage rate. billedWhileStopped applies the running hourly rate to stopped hours.
  • The bill is capped at each server's monthly price, which binds at about 624 hours at these rates. shape.monthly applies that cap to machines mode.
  • Snapshots, backups, volumes, Floating IPs and load balancers are separate products and are not priced by this card. Hetzner no longer publishes a snapshot rate on its live pricing pages: the API exposes an image price per GB-month (and a 20% backup surcharge) but needs a token to read, and the last figure visible on a legacy page variant was €0.011/$0.0130 per GB-month, unverified today.
  • Cost-Optimized plans (CX23 at €5.99 and up) are listed but marked not available for ordering at this check, so they are not modelled here.