Hetzner Review 2026: Cloud and Dedicated Pricing After the June Price Rise
Hetzner review for 2026: what the 15 June price rise did to CX, CPX and CCX plans, who kept old pricing, IPv4 and billing fine print, Server Auction and storage value.
Hetzner spent a decade as the cheapest serious cloud in Europe. Then 2026 happened: two setup-fee changes, an April price rise, and a 15 June restructure that pushed some new-order prices up by more than 150%.
This review covers what Hetzner sells, what it costs now, who is still on old pricing, the billing and signup fine print, and where it still beats the competition. All prices were checked against Hetzner's own pages on 1 October 2026 and exclude VAT.
Verdict: still good value, no longer a steal
Hetzner Online GmbH is a German hosting company that owns its data center parks in Falkenstein and Nuremberg (Germany) and Helsinki (Finland), and rents colocation space in Ashburn, Hillsboro and Singapore. For years its cloud was the default answer to "where can I get a real VPS in Europe for the price of a sandwich". In 2026 that answer changed.
Hetzner raised prices on 1 April 2026, adjusted dedicated server setup fees twice, and on 15 June 2026 restructured its server line-up with new-order prices that went up sharply: the entry CX23 moved from EUR 3.99 to EUR 5.49 a month, the shared AMD CPX22 from EUR 7.99 to EUR 19.49, and the dedicated-vCPU CCX13 from EUR 15.99 to EUR 42.99. On top of that, every Cost-Optimized CX and Arm CAX plan was listed as "not available" when we checked on 1 October 2026.
Our take
Hetzner is still worth a look for EU workloads, especially if you can get a CX or CAX plan, want 20 TB of included traffic, or buy from the Server Auction with no setup fee. Its US and Singapore regions are no longer cheap, and the dedicated-vCPU CCX line has lost most of its price edge. Existing customers who do not rescale keep their old price.
Pros
- 20 TB of included outbound traffic on EU shared plans, and incoming and internal traffic is free
- Hourly billing with a monthly price cap and no minimum contract on cloud plans
- Server Auction machines carry no setup fee and were excluded from the June 2026 rise
- Object Storage from EUR 4.99 a month for 1 TB storage plus 1 TB egress, also untouched by the rise
- Hetzner-owned data centers in Germany and Finland, with support run by its own team in Germany
Cons
- New-order prices rose 30% to almost 200% on 15 June 2026 depending on the plan and region
- CX and CAX plans were marked "not available" on 1 October 2026 and the status page reports limited cloud availability since 26 June 2026
- US and Singapore cost far more than the EU and include only 0.5 to 8 TB of traffic
- IPv4 is an extra EUR 0.50 a month, and powered-off servers still bill
- Signup can require ID or a card prepayment, and large first orders may be rejected
What Hetzner sells and where
Hetzner is best known for three things: Hetzner Cloud (hourly virtual servers), dedicated root servers, and the Server Auction, a marketplace of used dedicated machines. It also sells Object Storage, Storage Boxes, web hosting and managed servers.
The cloud runs in three network zones. eu-central covers Falkenstein (fsn1), Nuremberg (nbg1) and Helsinki (hel1); us-east is Ashburn, Virginia; us-west is Hillsboro, Oregon; ap-southeast is Singapore, which opened on 6 August 2024. We found no new cloud locations announced in 2025 or 2026.
- Available in all six locations: Cloud Shared AMD (CPX), Cloud Dedicated AMD (CCX), Primary IPs and Load Balancers
- EU only: Cloud Shared Intel/AMD (CX), Cloud Shared Ampere Arm (CAX) and Object Storage
- Dedicated root servers: Germany and Finland only - they cannot be ordered in Ashburn, Hillsboro or Singapore
Hetzner says plainly that its US and Singapore sites are colocation: "We do not have our own data center parks in the USA or in Singapore. There, we use colocation space at other data centers." It also explains why those regions cost more: "the operating costs in the USA and Singapore are too high to cover them with the attractive prices that we can offer for our products in Europe." Prices are the same across all three EU locations.
The 2026 price changes, in order
Hetzner's 2026 increases came in four steps, all blamed on the hardware market. In February the company wrote of RAM makers that "their pricing policy is hardly comprehensible and has driven up costs massively in a short period of time. The situation is similar for NVMe SSDs."
- 2 February 2026: one-time setup fees for dedicated servers adjusted, citing RAM and NVMe costs.
- 23 February 2026: a price change announced for 1 April 2026 that applied to "both new orders and existing products". Hetzner published no figures in that statement, so we do not quote any.
- 29 April 2026: dedicated server setup fees adjusted again because RAM and NVMe SSD prices "have continued to rise".
- 15 June 2026, 8:00 CEST: announced on 27 May, a restructure and price increase for new orders and cloud rescales on all dedicated servers and cloud plans at all locations, paired with "a significant reduction in one-time setup fees for most dedicated servers".
What the 15 June rise did to monthly prices
- CX23 (EU): EUR 3.99 to EUR 5.49, about +38% (USD 4.99 to 6.49)
- CX33 (EU): EUR 6.49 to EUR 8.49, about +31%
- CAX11 (EU, Arm): EUR 4.49 to EUR 5.99, about +33%
- CPX22 (EU): EUR 7.99 to EUR 19.49, about +144%
- CCX13 (EU): EUR 15.99 to EUR 42.99, about +169%
- CCX63 (EU): EUR 374.49 to EUR 853.49, about +128%
- CPX11 (US): EUR 5.99 to EUR 17.49, about +192%
- CPX12 (Singapore): EUR 7.99 to EUR 15.49, about +94%
Who is protected
"Currently rented servers are not affected by the price adjustment." Orders placed before 15 June 2026 but delivered after it also kept the old price. The catch: the rise applies to cloud instance rescales, and Hetzner warns that "certain changes to servers with legacy pricing may trigger a switch to the current pricing." If you run an old CPX or CCX server, check before resizing it.
Not affected by the June rise: web hosting, managed servers, Server Auction machines, IPs, storage products, Load Balancers, Volumes, Snapshots and Object Storage. Hetzner's FAQ explains why even the older Cost-Optimized plans went up: "Even operating already-deployed servers incurs ongoing costs, particularly for replacing components that fail in operation."
Hetzner Cloud pricing in October 2026
All prices below are Hetzner's current new-order monthly caps for Germany and Finland, excluding the EUR 0.50 IPv4 address and VAT (19% for German customers). Every cloud plan is billed hourly up to that cap and has no minimum contract period.
Cost-Optimized: CX (Intel/AMD) and CAX (Arm)
- CX23 / CAX11 - 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe: EUR 5.49 / EUR 5.99
- CX33 / CAX21 - 4 vCPU, 8 GB, 80 GB: EUR 8.49 / EUR 10.49
- CX43 / CAX31 - 8 vCPU, 16 GB, 160 GB: EUR 15.99 / EUR 20.99
- CX53 / CAX41 - 16 vCPU, 32 GB, 320 GB: EUR 29.49 / EUR 40.99
These are the plans that made Hetzner famous, and they still include 20 TB of traffic. The problem is getting one: on 1 October 2026 every CX and CAX plan showed "not available" and the page noted that "the number of available servers is limited". Hetzner's status page has listed "Limited availability of cloud instances" since 26 June 2026. Treat availability as constrained and changing, not as discontinued.
Regular Performance: CPX (shared AMD)
- CPX22 - 2 vCPU, 4 GB, 80 GB: EUR 19.49
- CPX32 - 4 vCPU, 8 GB, 160 GB: EUR 35.49
- CPX42 - 8 vCPU, 16 GB, 320 GB: EUR 69.49
- CPX52 - 12 vCPU, 24 GB, 480 GB: EUR 100.49
- CPX62 - 16 vCPU, 32 GB, 640 GB: EUR 129.99
General Purpose: CCX (dedicated AMD vCPU)
- CCX13 - 2 vCPU, 8 GB, 80 GB, 20 TB: EUR 42.99
- CCX23 - 4 vCPU, 16 GB, 160 GB, 20 TB: EUR 85.99
- CCX33 - 8 vCPU, 32 GB, 240 GB, 30 TB: EUR 138.49
Dedicated servers and the Server Auction
The June restructure renamed the dedicated line into -1, -2 and -3 variants plus "-1-LTD" limited models. Current examples, monthly excluding IPv4 and VAT:
- AX41-1-LTD: EUR 57.30, no setup fee (USD 67.10) - "offered as long as supply lasts"
- EX44-1-LTD: EUR 57.30, no setup fee (USD 72.10) - also limited
- AX42-1: EUR 97.30 plus EUR 49.00 setup (USD 117.10 plus 59.00)
- EX63-1: EUR 147.30 plus EUR 74.00 setup (USD 172.10 plus 84.00)
- Dell DX enterprise line (June 2026): from EUR 705.70 a month including two IPv4 addresses, plus EUR 349.00 setup
Hetzner also launched new hardware through the turmoil: a GEX131 GPU server with an RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (December 2025), a Xeon 6731P server with Gen5 NVMe (April 2026), the Dell DX154 and DX294 (June 2026) and a GEX45 GPU server (September 2026).
The Server Auction is the value escape hatch. Prices are set by a Dutch-style auction, so they fall over time, and Hetzner notes: "All without setup fees by the way." Defective hardware is replaced free, but written support for rentals under EUR 37.30 excluding VAT is lower priority. Crucially, auction servers were excluded from the June 2026 increase.
Storage: the part that did not get more expensive
Object Storage launched on 3 December 2024 and is EU only. It has a "monthly base price of $ 5.99 / EUR 4.99, which includes 1 TB of storage and 1 TB of egress traffic", then EUR 0.0067 per TB-hour for storage and EUR 1.00 per TB of extra outbound traffic. It was not part of the June rise. One caution: the status page showed "Object Storage in location HEL1 degraded" in Monitoring state from 9 September 2026.
Storage Boxes are the backup product: BX11, BX21, BX31 and BX41 give 1, 5, 10 and 20 TB, 100 sub-accounts, 10 to 40 snapshots, and "Each Storage Box comes with unlimited traffic." We could not confirm current Storage Box prices on an official page, so we do not quote them here.
Billing fine print
- Monthly cap: "Your server's bill will never exceed its monthly price cap. If you delete your cloud server before the end of the billing month, we will only bill you for the hourly rate." Hourly usage is rounded up.
- Powered off still bills: "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." Delete it, or snapshot and delete, to stop the meter.
- IPv4 costs extra: EUR 0.50 a month per Primary IPv4. IPv6 is free. Going IPv6-only is how you save the EUR 0.50; there is no separate discount.
- Traffic: only outbound traffic is billed, in blocks of 100 MB once you exceed the allowance. Hetzner states EUR 1 ($1.20) per TB overage for root servers; we did not find the cloud overage rate on an official page.
- Backups: a flat 20% of the server price, so about EUR 1.10 a month on a CX23.
- Account limits: by default up to 5 servers and up to 8 dedicated-resource servers; limits can be raised on request.
Signup verification and contract terms
Hetzner screens new accounts hard. Its fraud-prevention FAQ says "we may ask you to verify your account before we process an order", either by ID document or by prepayment with a credit card. Large first orders "may not automatically process" or may be rejected, and it advises you "do not use a free email address" and "do not use a VPN service" when signing up. The verification credit is refunded only "if you completely close the account".
Under the terms, contracts run for "an unlimited time period unless otherwise agreed" and "may be terminated by either party with 30 days' notice to the end of the month" (cloud servers are simply deleted and billed hourly). Hetzner can accept or reject a contract within 5 work days, and consumers get a 14-day right of withdrawal without giving reasons.
Support and reliability
Hetzner Cloud is unmanaged: you run the operating system and everything on it. Support is by ticket from the Hetzner Console, plus a customer service phone line (+49 9831 505-0). 24-hour technical phone lines exist per data center but only for dedicated server and colocation customers, protected by a telephone password. Hetzner says "Hetzner's own team of technicians in Germany provides customer support for the Hetzner Cloud servers in Europe, the USA, and Singapore."
On 1 October 2026 the status page showed two open items: limited availability of cloud instances (since 26 June) and degraded Object Storage in HEL1 (since 9 September). On the third-party side, Trustpilot showed a TrustScore of 3.0 out of 5 from 2,982 reviews on the same day.
Who should use Hetzner in late 2026
- Good fit: EU-hosted apps, side projects and CI runners if you can get a CX or CAX plan; bandwidth-heavy workloads that benefit from 20 TB included; anyone who wants a dedicated box cheaply from the Server Auction; S3-style storage at EUR 4.99 for the first TB.
- Existing customers: keep your servers as they are. Your price is protected until you rescale or change a legacy server in a way that triggers current pricing.
- Poor fit: US or Asia latency-sensitive workloads on a budget, dedicated-vCPU needs where CCX now starts at EUR 42.99, and teams that want managed services or phone support for cloud.
If you are comparing US-friendly clouds, our Vultr review and Linode review cover providers with a broader global footprint.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Hetzner Cloud cost in 2026?
In the EU, new orders start at EUR 5.49 a month for a CX23 (2 vCPU, 4 GB) plus EUR 0.50 for IPv4 and VAT. CX and CAX plans were showing as not available on 1 October 2026, so the entry point you can actually order may be CPX22 at EUR 19.49.
Did the June 2026 price rise affect my existing server?
No, unless you change it. The 15 June 2026 prices apply to new orders and cloud rescales; currently rented servers keep their price. The earlier 1 April 2026 change did apply to existing products.
Do I pay for a Hetzner server that is powered off?
Yes. A cloud server bills for as long as it exists, whether it is on or off. Only deleting it stops the charge, and you then pay just the hours used, capped at the monthly price.
Is an IPv4 address included?
No. A Primary IPv4 costs EUR 0.50 a month excluding VAT. IPv6 is free, and running IPv6-only is the only way to avoid the charge.
Why is Hetzner asking for my ID?
It is part of Hetzner's fraud prevention. You can verify with an ID document or a credit card prepayment. Avoid free email addresses and VPNs during signup, and expect large first orders to be reviewed or rejected.
How do I cancel, and is there a refund?
Delete cloud servers any time and you pay only the hourly usage. Contracts such as dedicated servers end with 30 days' notice to the end of the month, and consumers have a 14-day right of withdrawal. The verification prepayment is refunded only when you close the account completely.
Are US and Singapore servers priced like Germany?
No. They are colocation sites with higher costs: the US CPX11 is EUR 17.49 and Singapore CPX12 EUR 15.49, with only 0.5 to 8 TB of traffic instead of 20 TB or more in the EU. CX, CAX and Object Storage are not offered there.
Can I rent a dedicated server in the US?
No. Dedicated root servers can only be ordered in Germany and Finland. Ashburn, Hillsboro and Singapore offer cloud servers only.
Key takeaways
- New EU cloud orders start at EUR 5.49 (CX23), but CX and CAX plans showed as not available on 1 October 2026.
- The 15 June 2026 rise hit new orders and rescales only: CPX22 went from EUR 7.99 to 19.49 and CCX13 from EUR 15.99 to 42.99.
- Existing servers keep their price unless a change triggers current pricing, so check before rescaling.
- Server Auction, Object Storage, Storage Boxes, IPs and Volumes were not affected by the June rise.
- IPv4 costs EUR 0.50 a month and powered-off servers keep billing until deleted.
- US and Singapore regions cost far more and include much less traffic than the EU.
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