Contabo vs Hetzner: Which Budget VPS Is Better for Self-Hosting Apps?

Contabo gives you about twice the RAM per euro: its Cloud VPS 4 lists 4 vCPUs and 8 GB for €4.40 a month on a 24-month term.

Hetzner’s CX33, with the same cores and RAM, costs €8.49 a month but adds NVMe storage, hourly billing, and a 99.9% monthly SLA with credits.

Choose Contabo for memory-heavy hobby projects you’ll run for months. Choose Hetzner for production apps and short tests.

The Contabo review and the Hetzner review cover each provider in full. This page compares them for one job: running your own apps on a tight budget.

Contabo vs Hetzner: the short verdict

Contabo wins on raw resources per euro, while Hetzner wins on storage speed, billing flexibility, and uptime terms.

Contabo: for home labs, test servers, and memory-heavy apps where more RAM matters more than peak speed.

Hetzner: for production apps, busy websites, and anything that needs fast disk access, plenty of bandwidth, or hourly billing.

Both are unmanaged. You install, secure, and update the server yourself.

Contabo vs Hetzner at a glance

Contabo bills in euros. All prices on this page exclude VAT, and Hetzner’s also exclude its IPv4 charge. Prices confirmed on September 25, 2026.

Contabo and Hetzner resources per euro at similar sizes

At similar prices, Contabo’s Cloud VPS plans give you roughly twice the RAM per euro of Hetzner’s CX plans, but only on Contabo’s 24-month term.

Contabo’s prices come from its Cloud VPS page, which shows an effective monthly rate for a 24-month subscription.

Hetzner’s come from its June 2026 price adjustment for Germany and Finland. The cost-optimized plans page lists CX plans in Nuremberg and Helsinki.

Prices confirmed on September 25, 2026.

Prices change often, so check Contabo’s current prices and Hetzner’s current prices before you buy.

Hetzner’s site showed some shared cloud plans as currently not available when we checked, and availability can vary by location. Check its cloud pricing page before you plan around them.

Contabo’s figures assume a two-year commitment, while Hetzner bills by the hour. Check Contabo’s price for a shorter term at checkout before you compare them directly.

How Hetzner’s June 2026 price rise changes the gap with Contabo

Hetzner’s June 15, 2026 price rise lifted its entry CX23 to €5.49 ($6.49) a month, above Contabo’s larger Cloud VPS 4 at €4.40.

The new prices apply to new orders and rescales. CX23 (2 vCPUs, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe) cost €3.99 before the change.

The Regular Performance line rose more. CPX22, with 2 AMD shared vCPUs and 4 GB, went from €7.99 to €19.49 ($22.99).

For about that money, Contabo’s Cloud VPS 12 lists 12 vCPUs and 48 GB of RAM at €20.00 a month.

For your budget, this means only Hetzner’s cost-optimized CX and Arm-based CAX plans (CAX11 from €5.99) stay close to Contabo on price.

Contabo and Hetzner traffic and network speed

Hetzner includes at least 20 TB of traffic a month on its European cloud servers, while Contabo lists unlimited traffic under a fair-use policy with ports from 200 Mbit/s.

Contabo says it may throttle servers with exceptionally high or disruptive usage.

Port speed is 200 Mbit/s on Cloud VPS 4, 600 Mbit/s on Cloud VPS 8, and up to 1 Gbit/s on larger plans.

A 200 Mbit/s port moves at most about 25 megabytes per second. That’s plenty for a personal app, but tight for serving large files or video to many users.

Hetzner counts outgoing traffic and bills any overage in 100 MB blocks rather than throttling.

Hetzner’s Regular Performance page lists 1 to 5 TB in the US and from 0.5 TB in Singapore, far below Europe.

For your app, this means Contabo suits apps that mostly compute and store. Hetzner’s European servers suit apps that send a lot of data.

Winner: Hetzner, for a clear published allowance, especially in Europe.

Contabo vs Hetzner storage: NVMe vs SSD

Hetzner’s CX and CPX plans use NVMe storage, while Contabo’s Cloud VPS plans use standard SSD but give 100 GB against Hetzner’s 80 GB at 8 GB of RAM.

Contabo also sells a separate Performance VPS line with NVMe, according to its budget VPS article.

NVMe drives connect more directly to the processor than standard SSDs, so they handle many small reads and writes faster. Databases and busy apps feel that difference most.

The NVMe vs SSD breakdown explains when it matters.

Winner: Hetzner for speed, Contabo for capacity.

Contabo and Hetzner backups, snapshots, and extra charges

Hetzner publishes its backup price at 20% of the server cost, while Contabo includes 1 to 3 free snapshots but doesn’t list its Auto Backup price.

Hetzner keeps seven backup slots and bills snapshots per GB, as its billing FAQ explains. With backups, CX33 comes to about €10.19 ($11.99) a month.

A primary IPv4 address adds €0.50 ($0.60) a month on Hetzner, going by its IPv4 pricing docs. IPv6 is free.

Contabo includes one snapshot on Cloud VPS 4, two on Cloud VPS 6, and three from Cloud VPS 8 up. Auto Backup, a daily off-server backup, costs extra.

Winner: Hetzner for published backup pricing, Contabo for included snapshots.

Contabo and Hetzner contracts, cancellation, and refunds

Contabo ties each server to a fixed term that renews automatically unless you cancel with four weeks’ notice, while Hetzner bills by the hour with no term.

Contabo’s terms and conditions offer initial terms of one, three, six, or twelve months. The contract then extends by the same length.

Contabo has no money-back guarantee. Under its right of withdrawal, consumers can withdraw within 14 days but pay for the service already used.

Hetzner caps hourly billing at the monthly price. It bills a server while it exists, even when powered off, so delete servers you no longer need.

For your setup, this means Hetzner is better for short tests you’ll delete in a day. Contabo rewards longer commitments, as long as you track the notice window.

Winner: Hetzner, for billing with no lock-in.

Contabo and Hetzner uptime guarantees

Contabo and Hetzner both promise 99.9%, but Hetzner measures it monthly and pays compensation as Cloud Credit, while Contabo measures an annual average with no stated credits.

Contabo’s terms guarantee 99.9% annual average connectivity, excluding announced maintenance and force majeure. That allows about 8.8 hours of downtime a year.

Hetzner’s cloud SLA covers 99.9% monthly availability, or about 43 minutes a month. Our guide to what an uptime guarantee means explains why the measuring period matters.

Winner: Hetzner, for a monthly SLA with compensation.

Contabo and Hetzner regions

Contabo offers 7 regions, including Japan, India, Australia, and the UK, against Hetzner’s 6 cloud locations.

Contabo lists the European Union, United Kingdom, United States, Singapore, Japan, India, and Australia.

Hetzner’s cloud locations are its own parks in Falkenstein, Nuremberg, and Helsinki, plus Ashburn, Hillsboro, and Singapore.

The cheapest CX plans run in Nuremberg and Helsinki only. In the US, Hetzner’s CPX plans start at €17.49 ($20.49) a month.

Winner: Contabo, for Japan, India, Australia, and the UK.

Contabo and Hetzner DDoS protection and support

Contabo and Hetzner both include DDoS protection at no extra cost, but Hetzner adds weekday phone support for cloud customers, while Contabo offers chat and tickets.

Contabo’s DDoS protection page says the service is free and switched on automatically for all servers. Hetzner’s DDoS protection page also lists it for all customers.

Contabo’s help center points you to chat for quick questions and tickets for complex ones. It doesn’t list support hours there.

Hetzner’s support page lists a phone line for cloud and billing, Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm CET, plus a contact form, docs, and a forum.

Neither provider manages your server, so support covers the platform, not your apps.

Winner: Tie on DDoS protection, with the support choice down to whether you prefer chat or phone.

Which fits your self-hosted app, Contabo or Hetzner?

Contabo fits long-running, memory-heavy projects on a fixed budget, and Hetzner fits production apps, European traffic, and short tests.

A home lab or Docker stack with many small services: Contabo Cloud VPS 8 gives you 24 GB of RAM for €11.20 a month on a two-year term.

If you’re self-hosting a forum or community site in Europe, Hetzner CX33 gives fast NVMe storage and at least 20 TB of traffic.

Running an AI tool or database that needs lots of memory? Contabo’s RAM per euro is hard to beat, if the port speed is enough.

Testing something for a day or two? Hetzner’s hourly billing means you pay only for the hours the server exists.

Running your own server takes real skills. The skills a self-managed VPS needs help you judge whether you’re ready.

Contabo vs Hetzner winners by category

Hetzner wins five of the ten categories below and Contabo wins four, with DDoS protection a tie.

Our pick: Contabo for hobby and memory-heavy projects on a tight budget. Hetzner for production apps that need speed, bandwidth, and flexible billing.

Contabo also faces Vultr in Contabo vs Vultr, and Hetzner faces OVHcloud in OVHcloud vs Hetzner. Wider questions sit in the VPS hosting section.

Ready to check prices? Visit Contabo or visit Hetzner to see today’s plans before you buy.

Frequently asked questions

How we compared Contabo and Hetzner

This comparison uses official sources only. For Contabo, we used its Cloud VPS page, terms and conditions, right of withdrawal page, DDoS protection page, help center, and budget VPS article.

For Hetzner, we used its price adjustment notice, cloud pricing, cost-optimized and Regular Performance pages, billing FAQ, and IPv4 pricing.

We also used Hetzner’s cloud SLA, locations docs, DDoS protection page, and support page. We checked everything on September 25, 2026.

Our Methodology and Editorial Guidelines explain how we research hosts and correct errors.