--- title: "Hetzner vs DigitalOcean: €5.49 vs $4/mo | Digital Hosting" url: https://digitalhosting.com/articles/hetzner-vs-digitalocean description: "Hetzner cloud starts at €5.49/mo with 20 TB of EU transfer; DigitalOcean at $4/mo. The per-GB math, the 2026 US repricing, and which cloud fits you." lang: en --- Versus Head-to-head # Hetzner vs DigitalOcean For years the internet's answer was 'Hetzner is the same server for a third of the price.' In 2026 that's still largely true in Europe — and no longer true in the US, where Hetzner repriced sharply in June 2026. Here's the honest math, verified against both vendors' published pricing in July 2026. Last updated: July 9, 2026 By: W. Miller (https://digitalhosting.com/about#authors), Editor, Digital Hosting — reviewed independently by the Digital Hosting editorial team. Disclosure: 1 of the 2 providers listed here pay us a commission on a purchase — the ones without a paid link are captioned "Non-affiliate recommendation". Commission does not affect the ratings or the order. Summary verdict ## Short answer Pick Hetzner for EU-hosted workloads where bandwidth or RAM-per-euro dominates: entry cloud instances start at €5.49/mo (excl. VAT) and EU plans include 20 TB of transfer — an allowance DigitalOcean simply doesn't match. Pick DigitalOcean for US-based workloads (Hetzner's US entry pricing is now ~3× its EU rate), for managed services (databases, Kubernetes, app platform), and for the deeper docs-and-tutorials ecosystem. As a default for a US audience, DigitalOcean wins on totality; as a value play in Europe, Hetzner is still untouchable. Top pick DigitalOcean from $4/mo Verified September 2026 Check current pricing (https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=123996&awinaffid=2917215&ued=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.digitalocean.com%2Fpricing%2Fdroplets) At a glance ## Comparison table ### DigitalOcean: https://digitalhosting.com/providers/digitalocean Predictable developer VPS Best for Developers Starting price from $4/mo 1 vCPU / 512 MiB / 500 GiB transfer Verified September 2026 Ease 3 of 5 Performance 4 of 5 Support 3 of 5 Migration Not included Email Not included View Deal: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=123996&awinaffid=2917215&ued=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.digitalocean.com%2Fpricing%2Fdroplets ### Hetzner Cloud: https://digitalhosting.com/providers/hetzner Best price-to-performance Premium Pick Starting price from €5.49/mo (~$6.49) + VAT EU regions, shared vCPU (CX23) Verified September 2026 Ease 3 of 5 Performance 5 of 5 Support 3 of 5 Migration Not included Email Not included See current pricing: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/ | Provider | Best for | Starting price | Ease | Performance | Support | Migration | Email | Get it | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | DigitalOcean (https://digitalhosting.com/providers/digitalocean)Developers comfortable on the command line | Predictable developer VPS | from $4/mo 1 vCPU / 512 MiB / 500 GiB transfer Verified September 2026 | Ease of use: 3 of 5 | Performance: 4 of 5 | Support: 3 of 5 | Not included | Not included | View Deal: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=123996&awinaffid=2917215&ued=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.digitalocean.com%2Fpricing%2Fdroplets | | Hetzner Cloud (https://digitalhosting.com/providers/hetzner)Cost-conscious teams that can host in EU regions | Best price-to-performance | from €5.49/mo (~$6.49) + VAT EU regions, shared vCPU (CX23) Verified September 2026 | Ease of use: 3 of 5 | Performance: 5 of 5 | Support: 3 of 5 | Not included | Not included | See current pricing (https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/)Non-affiliate recommendation | Providers in this guide ## The two contenders Best developer VPS Developers comfortable on the command line 4.7 Editor score Pricing from $4/mo Verified September 2026 #### Pros - + Clean control panel and predictable pricing model - + Strong documentation and community tutorials - + Managed databases and app platform available #### Cons - − Self-managed by default - − Support tier depends on plan Confirm current pricing on the provider's site. Visit DigitalOcean (https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=123996&awinaffid=2917215&ued=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.digitalocean.com%2Fpricing%2Fdroplets) Best price/performance Cost-conscious teams that can host in EU regions 4.7 Editor score Pricing from €5.49/mo (~$6.49) + VAT Verified September 2026 #### Pros - + Excellent price-to-performance ratio - + ARM instances available at low cost - + Free included traffic allowance #### Cons - − Limited US region availability - − Sparse hand-holding for beginners Visit Hetzner Cloud (https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/) ## Pricing, decoded (verified July 2026) DigitalOcean's smallest droplet is $4/mo (1 vCPU, 512 MiB, 500 GiB transfer); the more practical 1 GB droplet is $6/mo with 1,000 GiB of transfer. Billing is flat pay-as-you-go — no renewal games, per-second billing since early 2026. Hetzner's entry EU cloud instance lists at €5.49/mo excluding VAT (roughly $6.49) after its June 2026 price adjustment, with 20 TB of included transfer. That's about 20× DigitalOcean's included bandwidth at a comparable price — the single most decisive number in this comparison for bandwidth-heavy workloads. The US catch: effective June 15, 2026, Hetzner's US-region entry pricing jumped to roughly $20.49/mo excluding taxes (per Hetzner's own price-adjustment documentation), and US/Singapore locations include far less transfer than EU ones. If your users are in North America and you want cheap, DigitalOcean's $4–6 droplets now beat Hetzner's US regions outright. ## What the price doesn't tell you DigitalOcean is more than droplets: managed Postgres/MySQL/Redis, managed Kubernetes, an app platform, and the largest tutorial library in the business. If you'd otherwise pay yourself to operate a database, its premium over Hetzner can be negative in practice. Hetzner's catalog is narrower but deeper on value: cloud instances, famously cheap dedicated servers via its auction, and storage boxes. Its API and Terraform provider are solid; its managed-services layer is thin by comparison. We have not run our own cross-provider benchmarks, so we won't claim either is 'faster.' Public community benchmarks generally show Hetzner delivering more CPU and RAM per euro in EU regions — consistent with its pricing — but verify against your own workload before betting production on it. Account friction differs too: community reports of Hetzner's stricter new-account verification are common enough to mention, while DigitalOcean signup is typically instant. Neither is a reliability signal; both are established operators (Hetzner since 1997, DigitalOcean public since 2021). ## The decision in one paragraph EU users + self-managed + bandwidth or RAM-heavy: Hetzner, and it isn't close. US users, or anyone who wants managed databases/Kubernetes and a huge documentation ecosystem: DigitalOcean. Cost-obsessed and flexible on geography: host in Hetzner's EU regions and put a CDN in front for your US traffic — the 20 TB allowance makes that pattern cheap. ### Best fit for - + Developers choosing where a new self-managed VPS should live - + Bandwidth-heavy workloads (media, backups, game servers) doing the per-TB math - + Teams weighing raw price against managed-services convenience ### Consider another option if - − You want someone else to manage the server — see managed hosts like Cloudways instead - − You need enterprise contractual SLAs — that's hyperscaler territory - − Your compliance requires specific US data centers with EU-style pricing — that combination no longer exists at Hetzner Questions readers ask ## FAQ In Europe, yes — €5.49/mo entry instances with 20 TB of transfer (verified July 2026) beat DigitalOcean's per-GB and per-TB math comfortably. In the US, no: Hetzner's June 2026 repricing put its US entry instances near $20/mo, above DigitalOcean's $4–6 droplets. Ready to move forward? ### DigitalOcean is our top pick for this category. Check current pricing on the provider's site — promos and renewal rates change frequently. Check current pricing: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=123996&awinaffid=2917215&ued=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.digitalocean.com%2Fpricing%2Fdroplets Written and reviewed by W. Miller (https://digitalhosting.com/about#authors) — Editor, Digital Hosting W. Miller is the founder of TetraCore, LLC, the software company that owns and publishes Digital Hosting, and has spent 35 years in software development, technology and related services, including cloud and hosting. The uptime monitoring and price-collection infrastructure behind this site's original research is built and run in-house. See our affiliate disclosure (https://digitalhosting.com/affiliate-disclosure) and how we test and score providers (https://digitalhosting.com/how-we-test). ## Structured data ```json [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "WebSite", "name": "Digital Hosting", "url": "https://digitalhosting.com" }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "name": "Digital Hosting", "url": "https://digitalhosting.com", "logo": "https://digitalhosting.com/og-image.png", "email": "hello@digitalhosting.com", "description": "Independent hosting review site — comparisons for web hosting, VPS, WordPress hosting, business email, and domain registration. 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