If you're shopping for a Linux VPS in Europe, Hetzner Cloud is probably on your shortlist, and rightly so. They've earned their reputation. We get asked "why not just use Hetzner?" enough that we'll answer it honestly here.
This is written by RareCloud, so take the conclusion with the appropriate grain of salt. But the comparison table itself is factual: every row reflects Hetzner's public pricing and documentation as checked on 8 October 2026, after their two 2026 price changes. Prices exclude VAT. Always verify current prices on Hetzner's own pages.
TL;DR
Use Hetzner Cloud if: you want German or Finnish datacenters specifically, very large dedicated servers, or their mature tooling ecosystem with a decade of community answers behind it.
Use RareCloud if: your users are in Eastern Europe (our cloud region is in Bucharest), you want an orderable 2 vCPU / 8 GB server for €14.99 a month, billed hourly and capped at the monthly price, you care about properly scoped API tokens, you want your AI tools connected via MCP, or you want crypto as a payment option.
Side-by-side
| RareCloud | Hetzner Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry cloud plan | €3.99/mo (1 vCPU / 2 GB, IPv4 included) | CX23 €5.49 + €0.50 IPv4, listed as not available; cheapest orderable: CPX22 €19.49 + IPv4 |
| 2 vCPU / 8 GB | G-2: €14.99/mo, 100 GB, 6 TB, IPv4 included | no shared 2 vCPU / 8 GB plan; closest orderable CPX32 (4 vCPU / 8 GB) €35.99 incl. IPv4 |
| Included traffic | 1 to 12 TB a month, by plan | 20 TB in EU locations |
| Billing model | hourly, capped at the monthly price (servers, volumes, Kubernetes nodes), invoiced monthly; credit pays first | hourly, capped monthly, invoiced monthly |
| API tokens | granular scopes + expiry dates + per-token rate limits | Read or Read & Write |
| AI agents (MCP) | official MCP server, manages infrastructure under scoped tokens | no official MCP server (community projects exist) |
| Customer activity log | account activity log in the console and API | per-resource action history in the API |
| Payment methods | card, PayPal, crypto, bank transfer | card, PayPal, SEPA; no crypto |
| Cloud region | Bucharest, on our own hardware | Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki, US, Singapore |
| Classic VPS locations | 11 (US ×4, UK, NL, DE, RO ×2, HK, JP) | cloud regions only |
| Managed Kubernetes | live (upstream Kubernetes; control plane included, workers from €7.99/mo) | none listed on their cloud page (DIY on cloud servers) |
| Block storage | €0.05/GB/mo, hourly metered | per-GB volume pricing |
| Terraform + CLI | version 0.3, on the same public API | mature (hcloud), the benchmark |
| Windows VPS / proxies | yes (separate product lines) | no |
Where Hetzner wins (today)
- Mature tooling. The
hcloudCLI has been around since 2018 and the Terraform provider is battle-tested. Ours are at version 0.3; theirs are the benchmark we measure against. - Traffic. 20 TB included on every EU plan, against our 1 to 12 TB. If you move a lot of data, Hetzner gives you more of it.
- Big dedicated boxes. Their auction and AX lines are genuinely hard to beat on raw €/hardware at the top end.
- A decade of community answers. Whatever you hit, someone on the internet hit it first on Hetzner.
Where RareCloud wins (today)
- Eastern-EU latency. Our cloud region is in Bucharest, close to users in Romania, the Balkans and Turkey. Hetzner's closest data centers are in Germany and Finland.
- Price on what you can order. On 8 October 2026 Hetzner's lower-cost CX line was listed as not available. Against their orderable plans, our G-2 (2 vCPU, 8 GB, €14.99) costs less than half of CPX32 (€35.99 with IPv4), with the same hourly-plus-cap billing. If the CX line comes back, compare again: it is cheaper than ours.
- Token security. Our API tokens carry granular scopes, expiry dates and per-token rate limits. A Hetzner token is either Read or Read & Write for the whole project.
- AI-ready by default. We ship an official MCP server: Claude, Cursor or any MCP client can manage your infrastructure under scoped tokens you control. Hetzner has no official MCP server; community projects fill the gap.
- Payment flexibility. Crypto (alongside card, PayPal and bank transfer), and credit you hold pays your cloud invoice automatically.
- Product breadth. Windows VPS, classic VPS in 11 locations, proxies and ready-made n8n and OpenClaw servers live next to the cloud line in the same console and the same account.
What's actually equivalent
- Hardware. Modern CPUs and NVMe on both sides. You'll get fast disks either way.
- Billing philosophy. Both bill cloud servers hourly with a monthly cap and invoice after the month. On RareCloud, a new account prepays the first month of what it creates until it has made two payments and is at least 38 days old.
- Image library. Ubuntu, Debian and friends. Standard fare on both.
- Uptime in practice. Both run stable platforms; neither sells you five-nines fairy tales at this price point.
Migration check
If you're considering moving FROM Hetzner TO RareCloud:
- Snapshot your Hetzner server and keep it as a fallback
- Provision a same-sized RareCloud server (hourly billing means the test costs cents)
- Migrate via
rsyncover SSH for live data (works for most stateful apps) - Update DNS to point at the new server
The other direction works the same. We don't lock you in.
Bottom line
Hetzner Cloud is excellent. We respect them and we don't pretend to beat them on every axis. Where we differ is Eastern-EU latency, price on the plans you can order today, token security, MCP for AI tooling, and payment flexibility. If those matter to you, give us a try. If they don't, Hetzner's a great choice.