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Hetzner vs UpCloud
UpCloud starts $4.59 per month cheaper at the entry tier, counting the IPv4 address billed on top. UpCloud 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.
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.
UpCloud
$3.50/mo entry
Workloads that need consistent IOPS or heavy egress without a bandwidth-priced surprise at month end.
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 | Hetzner | UpCloud | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan price / month, with IPv4 where billed extra | $8.09 | $3.50 | UpCloud |
| Entry plan vCPU | 1 | 1 | |
| Entry plan RAM | 1 GB | 1 GB | |
| Entry plan storage | 20 GB | 10 GB | Hetzner |
| Listed regions | 6 | 15 | UpCloud |
| Management model | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | |
| Support | Ticket support; no phone support on cloud plans. | Ticket support included on all plans; the same team backs the paid Managed Databases product. | |
| Billing | Hourly metering, capped at the listed monthly price. | Hourly, capped at 28 days (672 hours) per calendar month. Prices are published in euros and US dollars. | |
| Free tier | No free tier. | 30-day free trial available for new accounts; no permanent 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 | Hetzner | UpCloud | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 vCPU / 1 GB | $8.09CPX02 · 1 vCPU · 1 GB · 20 GBSmallest Regular Performance type. Price excludes VAT and the IPv4 address ($0.60 a month extra). | $3.50Starter 1GB · 1 vCPU · 1 GB · 10 GBEntry Starter plan, with a per-customer purchase limit. Zero-cost egress under the Fair Transfer Policy. | UpCloud cheaper by $4.59 |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $23.59CPX22 · 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 80 GBRegular-performance AMD line. Price excludes VAT and IPv4. Was $9.49 before 15 June 2026. | $14.00Starter 4GB / 2 vCPU · 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 30 GBThe tier that reads as a direct swap for the DigitalOcean 4GB Droplet. | UpCloud cheaper by $9.59 |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB | $42.59CPX32 · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 160 GBRegular-performance AMD line. Price excludes VAT and IPv4. Was $15.99 before 15 June 2026. | $24.00Starter 8GB / 4 vCPU · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 40 GBFour cores at 8 GB. | UpCloud cheaper by $18.59 |
| 8 vCPU / 16 GB | $82.59CPX42 · 8 vCPU · 16 GB · 320 GBRegular-performance AMD line. Price excludes VAT and IPv4. Was $29.99 before 15 June 2026. | no plan this size | — |
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
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.
UpCloud
UpCloud is a Finnish independent cloud that competes on storage performance and transfer terms rather than headline price. Its MaxIOPS storage tier and zero-cost egress policy make it a natural upgrade from a budget host if you have hit an IOPS ceiling or a fair-use letter about egress. It publishes a global US dollar price for every plan as well as a euro price; we list the dollar price, read daily from UpCloud’s own price calculator.
Strengths
- Zero-cost egress across every product, subject to a Fair Transfer Policy
- MaxIOPS storage tier reaches up to 100k IOPS, unusual at this price band
- Fixed-price Starter plans as an on-ramp; billed by the hour, up to a 28-day monthly cap
- 99.99% SLA on Starter and 99.999% on Cloud Native and above
Weaknesses
- Helsinki costs more than the other zones for the older General Purpose, High CPU and High Memory plans
- The 1GB Starter is limited to five concurrent deployments per customer
- Region map is smaller than DigitalOcean’s despite the premium positioning
- Ecosystem is smaller: fewer marketplace images and community tutorials than the big names
Support: Ticket support included on all plans; the same team backs the paid Managed Databases product.
Billing: Hourly, capped at 28 days (672 hours) per calendar month. Prices are published in euros and US dollars.
Free tier: 30-day free trial available for new accounts; no permanent 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 | Hetzner | UpCloud |
|---|---|---|
| Plan (2 vCPU / 4 GB) | $23.59 | $14.00 |
| Automatic backups | 20% = +$4.72 ($28.31 total) | not captured yet |
| Outbound traffic beyond the allowance | Traffic beyond the included allowance is billed in 100 MB blocks; the per-TB price is not stated on the billing FAQ. | not captured yet |
| 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: Hetzner and UpCloud.
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
Hetzner and UpCloud both have data centres in these places. Each page ranks every provider there at the price charged in that location.
Hetzner vs UpCloud — frequently asked
Every answer is computed from this pair's own prices and costs.
- Which is cheaper for 1 vCPU / 1 GB, Hetzner or UpCloud?
- UpCloud Starter 1GB at $3.50/mo, which is $4.59 (57%) less than Hetzner CPX02 at $8.09/mo.
- How many datacentre locations do Hetzner and UpCloud have?
- Hetzner lists 6 and UpCloud lists 15.
- What do backups add at Hetzner and UpCloud?
- Hetzner: 20% of the plan price; UpCloud: not captured yet.