Disclosure: we may earn a commission or referral reward from CloudCone, Contabo, DigitalOcean (account credit, not cash), Hostwinds, InterServer, RackNerd, VPSDime and Vultr if you sign up through our links. It does not change the price you pay. Every other provider pays us nothing.
Contabo vs Hetzner
Contabo starts $1.49 per month cheaper at the entry tier, counting the IPv4 address billed on top. Contabo 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.
Contabo
$6.60/mo entry
Home labs, dev boxes and low-traffic apps where memory and disk matter more than sub-millisecond IOPS.
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 | Contabo | Hetzner | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan price / month, with IPv4 where billed extra | $6.60 | $8.09 | Contabo |
| Entry plan vCPU | 4 | 1 | Contabo |
| Entry plan RAM | 8 GB | 1 GB | Contabo |
| Entry plan storage | 100 GB | 20 GB | Contabo |
| Listed regions | 9 | 6 | Contabo |
| Management model | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | |
| Support | Ticket support included; response times are slower than DigitalOcean or Vultr under peak load. | Ticket support; no phone support on cloud plans. | |
| Billing | Monthly subscription (1, 3, 6, 12 or 24 months); price displayed excludes VAT. | Hourly metering, capped at the listed monthly price. | |
| Free tier | No free tier. | 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 | Contabo | Hetzner | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 vCPU / 1 GB | $6.60Cloud VPS 4 · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 100 GBFour cores and 8 GB RAM on a rolling monthly contract. Unlimited traffic under a fair-use policy, 200 Mbps port. | $8.09CPX02 · 1 vCPU · 1 GB · 20 GBSmallest Regular Performance type. Price excludes VAT and the IPv4 address ($0.60 a month extra). | Contabo cheaper by $1.49 |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $6.60Cloud VPS 4 · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 100 GBFour cores and 8 GB RAM on a rolling monthly contract. Unlimited traffic under a fair-use policy, 200 Mbps port. | $23.59CPX22 · 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 80 GBRegular-performance AMD line. Price excludes VAT and IPv4. Was $9.49 before 15 June 2026. | Contabo cheaper by $16.99 |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB | $6.60Cloud VPS 4 · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 100 GBFour cores and 8 GB RAM on a rolling monthly contract. Unlimited traffic under a fair-use policy, 200 Mbps port. | $42.59CPX32 · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 160 GBRegular-performance AMD line. Price excludes VAT and IPv4. Was $15.99 before 15 June 2026. | Contabo cheaper by $35.99 |
| 8 vCPU / 16 GB | $16.80Cloud VPS 8 · 8 vCPU · 24 GB · 300 GBEight cores, 24 GB RAM and 300 GB SSD. Unlimited traffic under a fair-use policy at 600 Mbps. | $82.59CPX42 · 8 vCPU · 16 GB · 320 GBRegular-performance AMD line. Price excludes VAT and IPv4. Was $29.99 before 15 June 2026. | Contabo cheaper by $65.79 |
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
Contabo
Contabo prices its Cloud VPS range on a plan-per-month basis rather than by-the-hour, and the resulting month-to-month prices are the lowest we track at most memory sizes from 8 GB up. The trade-off is upfront: the storage is SSD rather than NVMe, minimum contract is one month, and the effective monthly price falls further only if you pre-pay 24 months.
Strengths
- Cheapest RAM-per-dollar in this list at every tier from 8 GB up
- Unlimited traffic on every plan, subject to a fair-use policy that allows throttling
- One-month minimum contract; longer terms cut the effective monthly cost further
- Adequate US, EU and APAC datacentre coverage for a budget provider
Weaknesses
- SSD storage on Core VPS, not NVMe — cheaper providers now match the spec, this one does not
- Reputation for setup queues on new accounts, especially outside the EU
- Public bandwidth is capped at 200–800 Mbps depending on the plan
- Historically underinvested control panel; API surface is thinner than DigitalOcean’s
Support: Ticket support included; response times are slower than DigitalOcean or Vultr under peak load.
Billing: Monthly subscription (1, 3, 6, 12 or 24 months); price displayed excludes VAT.
Free tier: No free tier.
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 | Contabo | Hetzner |
|---|---|---|
| Plan (2 vCPU / 4 GB) | $6.60 | $23.59 |
| Automatic backups | not captured yet | 20% = +$4.72 ($28.31 total) |
| Outbound traffic beyond the allowance | not captured yet | 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 | not captured yet | not captured yet |
Sources: 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: Contabo 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
Contabo and Hetzner both have data centres in these places. Each page ranks every provider there at the price charged in that location.
Contabo vs Hetzner — frequently asked
Every answer is computed from this pair's own prices and costs.
- Which is cheaper for 1 vCPU / 1 GB, Contabo or Hetzner?
- Contabo Cloud VPS 4 at $6.60/mo, which is $1.49 (18%) less than Hetzner CPX02 at $8.09/mo.
- How many datacentre locations do Contabo and Hetzner have?
- Contabo lists 9 and Hetzner lists 6.
- What do backups add at Contabo and Hetzner?
- Contabo: not captured yet; Hetzner: 20% of the plan price.