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AWS Lightsail vs Hetzner
AWS Lightsail starts $3.09 per month cheaper at the entry tier, counting the IPv4 address billed on top. AWS Lightsail lists more regions, which matters if latency to a specific city is your constraint. Hetzner is the better pick for workloads with European users that move a lot of traffic each month.
AWS Lightsail
$5.00/mo entry
Teams who want AWS on the invoice and a plausible growth path, at Droplet prices for the first year.
Hetzner
$8.09/mo entry$7.49 plus $0.60 for an IPv4 address
Workloads with European users that move a lot of traffic each month.
Specification differences
Entry plans compared line by line. Rows marked with a dash are preferences rather than measurable wins, so we do not pick a side on them.
| Attribute | AWS Lightsail | Hetzner | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan price / month, with IPv4 where billed extra | $5.00 | $8.09 | AWS Lightsail |
| Entry plan vCPU | 2 | 1 | AWS Lightsail |
| Entry plan RAM | 0.5 GB | 1 GB | Hetzner |
| Entry plan storage | 20 GB | 20 GB | |
| Included transfer | 1 TB | 20 TB | Hetzner |
| Listed regions | 20 | 6 | AWS Lightsail |
| Management model | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | |
| Support | AWS Basic Support included; paid Developer/Business tiers via the parent account. | Ticket support; no phone support on cloud plans. | |
| Billing | Hourly metering, capped at the listed monthly price for the bundle. | Hourly metering, capped at the listed monthly price. | |
| Free tier | AWS says you can get started with Lightsail for free under the AWS Free Tier, but its pricing page names no bundle or duration. Check the Free Tier terms before counting on it. | No free tier. |
Same size, side by side
The cheapest plan from each provider that meets each size, so the comparison is between equal servers rather than two entry plans. Prices include a separately-billed IPv4 address where the provider charges for one.
| Size | AWS Lightsail | Hetzner | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 vCPU / 1 GB | $7.00General 1GB · 2 vCPU · 1 GB · 40 GBModest RAM but the bundled transfer runs ahead of DigitalOcean and Vultr at the same tier. | $8.09CPX02 · 1 vCPU · 1 GB · 20 GBSmallest Regular Performance type. Price excludes VAT and the IPv4 address ($0.60 a month extra). | AWS Lightsail cheaper by $1.09 |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $24.00General 4GB · 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 80 GBStraight lift of the DigitalOcean 4GB tier, on AWS invoicing. | $23.59CPX22 · 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 80 GBRegular-performance AMD line. Price excludes VAT and IPv4. Was $9.49 before 15 June 2026. | Hetzner cheaper by $0.41 |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB | $84.00General 16GB · 4 vCPU · 16 GB · 320 GBFirst general bundle with four vCPUs. | $42.59CPX32 · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 160 GBRegular-performance AMD line. Price excludes VAT and IPv4. Was $15.99 before 15 June 2026. | Hetzner cheaper by $41.41 |
| 8 vCPU / 16 GB | $164.00General 32GB · 8 vCPU · 32 GB · 640 GBEight vCPUs; double the 16GB bundle for a little under double the price. | $82.59CPX42 · 8 vCPU · 16 GB · 320 GBRegular-performance AMD line. Price excludes VAT and IPv4. Was $29.99 before 15 June 2026. | Hetzner cheaper by $81.41 |
Not in the table because they are sold out on the provider's own site today: Hetzner CX23 (2 vCPU, 4 GB, $7.09/mo), Hetzner CX33 (4 vCPU, 8 GB, $10.59/mo), Hetzner CX43 (8 vCPU, 16 GB, $19.09/mo). We check stock every day, and a plan returns to the table once it can be ordered again.
Every provider at these sizes, ranked: 1 GB RAM · 4 GB RAM · 8 GB RAM · 16 GB RAM
Where each one wins and loses
AWS Lightsail
Lightsail is Amazon’s answer to the DigitalOcean-style Droplet: a small set of flat-priced instances with a simplified console, bundled with the option to graduate onto the rest of AWS once you need a VPC, load balancer or IAM policy. The public-IPv4 bundles include a fixed monthly transfer allowance and there is a cheaper IPv6-only tier for people who can live without an IPv4 address. The catch is that the AWS Console’s reputation for complexity is not entirely fair to Lightsail, but the moment you outgrow it you inherit that complexity.
Strengths
- Flat monthly pricing with generous bundled transfer
- One-click upgrade path onto the wider AWS platform when you need it
- IPv6-only bundles a few dollars cheaper than the equivalent IPv4 tier
- Backed by AWS operational track record
Weaknesses
- Smaller-plan RAM and disk lag the budget-cloud peer group at the same price
- Add-ons like snapshots, load balancers and managed databases are billed separately
- Support is AWS-style ticket support, not developer chat
- Graduating to full AWS surfaces the complexity Lightsail was meant to hide
Support: AWS Basic Support included; paid Developer/Business tiers via the parent account.
Billing: Hourly metering, capped at the listed monthly price for the bundle.
Free tier: AWS says you can get started with Lightsail for free under the AWS Free Tier, but its pricing page names no bundle or duration. Check the Free Tier terms before counting on it.
Hetzner
Hetzner made its name as the price floor for European cloud servers, with included traffic far larger than the US budget clouds. Two things have changed that: prices rose on 15 June 2026, by 25% to 204% depending on the server type, and Hetzner’s cheapest shared-vCPU lines (CX, and the Arm-based CAX) are sold out, which leaves the dearer CPX line as what you can buy today. Prices exclude VAT, the region map is Europe-heavy, and a public IPv4 address is billed separately.
Strengths
- Very large included traffic allowance
- Hourly billing, capped at the monthly price
- An official API, command-line tool and Terraform provider
Weaknesses
- Europe-weighted region map; thin coverage outside the EU and two US sites
- Prices rose by 25% to 204% on 15 June 2026, and the cheapest lines (CX, CAX) are sold out
- IPv4 addresses carry a separate monthly charge
- New-account identity verification can delay first provisioning
Support: Ticket support; no phone support on cloud plans.
Billing: Hourly metering, capped at the listed monthly price.
Free tier: No free tier.
The full cost stack
What a server costs beyond its sticker price, shown for 2 vCPU / 4 GB. Only figures read from each provider's own documentation appear; a gap says “not captured yet”.
| Item | AWS Lightsail | Hetzner |
|---|---|---|
| Plan (2 vCPU / 4 GB) | $24.00 | $23.59 |
| Automatic backups | not captured yet | 20% = +$4.72 ($28.31 total) |
| Outbound traffic beyond the allowance | $0.09/GB over allowance | Traffic beyond the included allowance is billed in 100 MB blocks; the per-TB price is not stated on the billing FAQ. |
| Smallest managed load balancer | $18.00/mo | not captured yet |
Sources: aws.amazon.com · docs.hetzner.com
Price changes we have logged
- 2026-06-15 · Hetzner CX23: $4.99 → $6.49 notice
- 2026-06-15 · Hetzner CX33: $7.99 → $9.99 notice
- 2026-06-15 · Hetzner CPX22: $9.49 → $22.99 notice
- 2026-06-15 · Hetzner CPX32: $15.99 → $41.99 notice
Full record at the change log.
Every plan
The complete plan ladders, with the date and source of every price, are on each provider's page: AWS Lightsail and Hetzner.
All figures are the providers' own published list prices in USD, on-demand monthly. The index was last refreshed 2026-10-14, and every row shows the date its own price was read. Nothing here is live or negotiated pricing. Where a provider bills a public IPv4 address on top, it is added to the monthly price, the ranking and every cost per vCPU or per GB, and the row shows the parts: the server, any disk priced apart, and the IPv4 charge. Some prices exclude VAT or need a commitment; the plan notes say which. Check the provider's pricing page before you commit.
Related comparisons
Where both sell
AWS Lightsail and Hetzner both have data centres in these places. Each page ranks every provider there at the price charged in that location.
AWS Lightsail vs Hetzner — frequently asked
Every answer is computed from this pair's own prices and costs.
- Which is cheaper for 1 vCPU / 1 GB, AWS Lightsail or Hetzner?
- AWS Lightsail General 1GB at $7.00/mo, which is $1.09 (13%) less than Hetzner CPX02 at $8.09/mo.
- How many datacentre locations do AWS Lightsail and Hetzner have?
- AWS Lightsail lists 20 and Hetzner lists 6.
- What do backups add at AWS Lightsail and Hetzner?
- AWS Lightsail: not captured yet; Hetzner: 20% of the plan price.