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 publicly documented behavior as of June 2026, including Hetzner's recent price adjustment (increases on some lines). 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 (Bucharest metal, single-digit ms across Romania), you want hourly billing with an automatic monthly cap drawn from a credit balance that is a hard spending ceiling, 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
Where Hetzner wins (today)
- Mature tooling. The
hcloudCLI has been around since 2018 and the Terraform provider is battle-tested. Ours are in beta; theirs are the benchmark we measure against. - 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. Bucharest metal means single-digit milliseconds across Romania and low latency to the Balkans and Turkey. Hetzner's closest DCs are in Germany.
- Entry price, post-adjustment. Since Hetzner's recent price increase, our €3.99 entry cloud plan undercuts their entry shared tier, with the same hourly-plus-cap billing philosophy.
- Token security. Our API tokens carry granular scopes, expiry dates and per-token rate limits. Hetzner tokens are still all-or-nothing Read or Read+Write with no expiry, a long-standing community complaint.
- 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 nothing comparable.
- Payment flexibility. Crypto (alongside card, PayPal and bank transfer) and a credit balance that is a hard ceiling: top up, spend, never get a surprise invoice.
- Product breadth. Windows VPS, classic monthly VPS in 12 locations, proxies and one-click app servers live next to the cloud line in the same console and the same balance.
What's actually equivalent
- Hardware. Modern CPUs and NVMe on both sides. You'll get fast disks either way.
- Billing philosophy. Both bill hourly with a monthly cap; the difference is balance-based with a hard ceiling, no surprise invoice (us) vs post-paid (them).
- 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, entry pricing since their recent increase, 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.