Is Hetzner Still the Cheapest VPS? October 2026 Prices by Spec

Hetzner's CPX22, a cloud server with 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM, cost €6.49 a month with its IPv4 address at the start of 2026. On 23 October 2026 it costs €19.99 on the same basis. We set it against the cheapest self-managed 2 vCPU / 4 GB server at 24 other providers, and 20 of them charge less per month at their cheapest term. Seventeen still charge less at their renewal price, which is what you pay once any introductory discount runs out.

So no, Hetzner is no longer the cheapest place to rent that server. Two things complicate the answer. Hetzner's own cost-optimized CX line still undercuts nearly everyone, in the locations where you can get it. And at 4 GB and 8 GB, Hetzner still costs a little less than DigitalOcean, despite the threads saying otherwise.

HostingSift doesn't sell servers. We read the public price pages of 54 hosting providers every night and keep every reading. All prices below come from our snapshot of 23 October 2026, and the ones that decide a ranking were also checked on the provider's own site that day. Euro prices exclude VAT unless marked otherwise and are converted to dollars at the flat rate of 1.15 that the whole site uses, so treat the dollar figures as a guide. Some links on HostingSift earn us a commission. The tables here are sorted by price and nothing else.

How Hetzner got from €6.49 to €19.99

Hetzner raised its cloud prices twice in 2026, according to its own price adjustment notices. On 1 April 2026 most cloud servers went up by about a third, for new orders and existing servers alike. On 15 June 2026 every cloud line went up again, this time for new orders and rescales only: the cost-optimized CX and CAX plans by about a third, CPX22 by 144%, CPX32 by 154% and the dedicated-vCPU CCX13 by 169%.

Plan	vCPU / RAM / disk	Until 31 March	From 1 April	From 15 June	23 October, IPv4 included
CX23	2 / 4 GB / 40 GB	€2.99	€3.99	€5.49	€5.99
CAX11 (Arm)	2 / 4 GB / 40 GB	€3.29	€4.49	€5.99	€6.49
CX33	4 / 8 GB / 80 GB	€4.99	€6.49	€8.49	€8.99
CPX22	2 / 4 GB / 80 GB	€5.99	€7.99	€19.49	€19.99
CPX32	4 / 8 GB / 160 GB	€10.49	€13.99	€35.49	€35.99
CCX13 (dedicated vCPU)	2 / 8 GB / 80 GB	€11.99	€15.99	€42.99	€43.49

All prices are monthly, for Germany and Finland, excluding VAT. The first three price columns exclude the primary IPv4 address, which Hetzner bills separately at €0.50 a month; its website now shows prices with that address included, as in the last column. The April figures come from the April version of Hetzner's notice, archived on 7 May 2026, and the June figures from the current notice. Hetzner reused the same page for both rounds, which is why the April text is only on the archive now.

Excluding the IPv4 address, CPX22 went up 225% over both rounds, CPX32 238% and CX23 84%. With the address included, CPX22 went from €6.49 to €19.99, a rise of 208%, and CX23 from €3.49 to €5.99, a rise of 72%. That gap explains most of what follows: Hetzner's cheap line got more expensive, and its regular line stopped being cheap at all.

Our own Hetzner price history can't date these steps. Until 13 August 2026 our scraper read a stale catalogue page, so in our Hetzner price chart both increases land in July. From 13 August to 23 October our nightly readings show no Hetzner cloud price change. The one step in that window, €0.50 on 3 October, is the night we began including the IPv4 address in every provider's price.

Does Hetzner cost more than DigitalOcean now?

At 1 GB and 2 GB of RAM, yes. In Hetzner's own US-dollar price list on 23 October 2026, CPX02 (1 vCPU, 1 GB) costs $8.09 a month with its IPv4 address, against $6 at DigitalOcean, and CPX12 (1 vCPU, 2 GB) costs $14.09 against $12. At 4 GB and 8 GB, Hetzner is still cheaper, by 41 cents and $5.41.

RAM	Hetzner, own USD price incl. IPv4	DigitalOcean Basic Regular	Difference per month
1 GB	CPX02, 1 vCPU / 20 GB: $8.09	1 vCPU / 25 GiB: $6.00	Hetzner costs $2.09 more
2 GB	CPX12, 1 vCPU / 40 GB: $14.09	1 vCPU / 50 GiB: $12.00	Hetzner costs $2.09 more
4 GB	CPX22, 2 vCPU / 80 GB: $23.59	2 vCPU / 80 GiB: $24.00	Hetzner costs $0.41 less
8 GB	CPX32, 4 vCPU / 160 GB: $42.59	4 vCPU / 160 GiB: $48.00	Hetzner costs $5.41 less

Hetzner's dollar prices come from its public price data (CPX22 is listed at $22.99, plus $0.60 for IPv4). DigitalOcean's have not changed once in our nightly readings since 12 February 2026. A 5 October thread on r/hetzner asked exactly this question after comparing the 2 GB plans, and for that size the answer holds.

Traffic is where Hetzner still wins outright: its European locations include 20 TB a month on every plan above, while DigitalOcean's 4 GiB Droplet includes 4,000 GiB. For an API backend or a VPN endpoint that difference rarely matters. For a server handing out files, it can be worth more than the price gap. The DigitalOcean vs Hetzner comparison lists both catalogs plan by plan.

2 vCPU / 4 GB: who costs less than CPX22, per month and at renewal

On 23 October 2026 the cheapest 2 vCPU / 4 GB server you can rent month to month is OVHcloud's VPS-1 at €4.49 ($5.16) excluding VAT. Hetzner's CPX22 costs €19.99 ($22.99). Seventeen of the 24 other providers below sell this size month to month for less than CPX22, and three more beat it only on a longer contract.

Plan	Disk	Month to month	Lowest price (term)	Renewal price	Month to month in USD
OVHcloud VPS-1 (2027)	40 GB NVMe	€4.49	€3.81 (12 months, prepaid)	Same as the term price	$5.16
Contabo Storage VPS 10	300 GB SSD or 150 GB NVMe	€5.50	€4.40 (24 months, prepaid)	No separate rate shown	$6.33
Hetzner CX23 (location dependent)	40 GB NVMe	€5.99	None, billed hourly	Same	$6.89
Time4VPS Linux 4	50 GB SSD	€6.50 first month, then €12.99	€4.38 (24 months)	€8.76	$7.48
DreamHost Stack 4	75 GB NVMe	$8.99 for 3 months, then $15.99	$5.99 (24 months)	$10.99 (24 months), $11.99 (12 months)	$8.99
Servarica V3 KVM Fat Slice 2 (2 dedicated cores)	60 GB NVMe	$9.00	None	Same	$9.00
netcup VPS 500 G12.5	64 GB SSD	€7.98 (€9.50 incl. 19% VAT)	€5.91 (24 months)	Same as the term price	$9.18
HostGator Snappy 2000 NVMe 4	100 GB NVMe	$9.35	$4.18 (24 months)	$9.35	$9.35
Private Hosting VPS-KVM-4GB	40 GB SSD	€8.99	Same price on every term	Same	$10.34
A2 Hosting Self Managed Linux 4GB	80 GB NVMe	$10.99, then $19.00	$6.49 (36 months)	$19.00	$10.99
HostArmada Unmanaged Flux	80 GB NVMe	$11.80, then $13.88	$5.18 (12 months)	$11.52	$11.80
ExtraVM VPS 4GB	60 GB NVMe	$14.00	None	Same	$14.00
Godlike.Host Nitro 2 (unmanaged)	50 GB NVMe	€12.99 incl. VAT	€7.81 incl. VAT (36 months)	Same as the term price	$14.94
Liquid Web VPS 4GB Self-Managed	80 GB SSD	$17.00	None	Same	$17.00
Hostwinds Unmanaged SSD Cloud 3	75 GB SSD	$18.99	None	Same	$18.99
Scala Hosting Unmanaged Config #1	50 GB NVMe	$19.95, then $24.95	$19.95	$24.95	$19.95
Verpex Linux VPS D4 (2 dedicated CPUs)	80 GB NVMe	$19.99	$10.00 (12 months)	$19.99	$19.99
Vultr Regular Cloud Compute	80 GB SSD	$20.00	None, billed hourly	Same	$20.00
Hetzner CPX22	80 GB NVMe	€19.99	None, billed hourly	Same	$22.99
DigitalOcean, Linode, AWS Lightsail	80 GB	$24.00	None, billed hourly	Same	$24.00
Cloudzy VPS 4 GB	120 GB NVMe	$28.95	$23.16 (12 months)	Same as the term price	$28.95
netcup VPS Lite 1 G12.5s	80 GB SSD	Not offered	€4.92, €5.86 incl. 19% VAT (6-month minimum)	Same	Not offered
IONOS VPS M+	120 GB NVMe	Not offered	$5 for 3 months (12-month term)	$14.00	Not offered
Bluehost NVMe 4	100 GB NVMe	Not offered	$9.49 (24 months)	$11.99	Not offered
GoDaddy 2 vCPU / 4GB	100 GB NVMe	Not offered	$17.99 (36 months)	$29.99	Not offered

netcup lists its prices with VAT included, 19% for German visitors, so its rows show the net figure first. Godlike.Host charges the same VAT-inclusive price in every country, so its row stays gross. Hetzner, OVHcloud, Contabo, Private Hosting and Time4VPS list theirs without VAT. Every price includes one IPv4 address. netcup appears twice because its cheapest 2 / 4 server, VPS Lite 1, is only sold six months at a time, while VPS 500 can be rented month to month. The A2 Hosting, Verpex, Scala Hosting, GoDaddy and Private Hosting prices are from our nightly reading only; we couldn't confirm them on the provider's page on the day.

The renewal column is where several bargains thin out, though most survive it: 17 of the 24 stay below CPX22 at the renewal price they publish. Contabo shows no separate renewal rate, so we leave it out of that count; if its term price simply continues, it makes 18. A2 Hosting's $6.49 needs three years paid up front and then becomes $19.00. GoDaddy and Scala Hosting end up more expensive than CPX22 once their first term ends. The lowest prices are monthly equivalents, and the first invoice can be far larger: Bluehost's 24-month term is $227.76 up front and GoDaddy's 36-month term $647.64. IONOS's $5 lasts three months of a one-year contract, so the first year costs $141. HostArmada's renewal price is lower than its own month-to-month price, which makes its 12-month plan the honest way to buy it.

The cheap European rows have their own trade-offs. OVH's VPS-1 shares the smallest disk in the table, 40 GB, but includes a daily backup and a 500 Mbps port with unlimited traffic in Europe. Contabo's servers sit on a 200 Mbit/s port, and at Contabo the same €5.50 also buys a 4 vCPU / 8 GB Cloud VPS 4, so a 2 / 4 buyer there should take the bigger machine unless the 300 GB disk is the point. Cloudzy's price is for its reference region, Los Angeles; the "50% off" on its site applies, in our data, only to yearly terms in Utah and Las Vegas. Servarica's Fat Slice plans come with dedicated cores and a 250 Mbps port, and their prices have moved more than anyone's in this table since August (see below). The Hetzner vs Vultr comparison covers the closest like-for-like among the hourly clouds.

4 vCPU / 8 GB under $25

On 23 October 2026 eleven servers with 4 vCPUs and 8 GB of RAM cost under $25 a month with no contract and stay there after any first period, the cheapest being Contabo's Cloud VPS 4 at €5.50 ($6.33) excluding VAT. Two of the eleven are Hetzner's location-dependent CX33 and CAX21. Hetzner's CPX32 costs €35.99 ($41.39), more than Hostwinds at $38.99 and close to Vultr's $40.

Plan	Disk	Month to month	Lowest price (term)	Renewal price	Month to month in USD
Contabo Cloud VPS 4	100 GB SSD	€5.50	€4.40 (24 months, prepaid)	No separate rate shown	$6.33
OVHcloud VPS-2 (2027)	75 GB NVMe	€8.49	€7.21 (12 months, prepaid)	Same as the term price	$9.76
Hetzner CX33 (location dependent)	80 GB NVMe	€8.99	None, billed hourly	Same	$10.34
Hetzner CAX21, Arm (location dependent)	80 GB NVMe	€10.99	None, billed hourly	Same	$12.64
Contabo Cloud VPS Plus 4	150 GB NVMe	€13.50	€10.79 (24 months, prepaid)	No separate rate shown	$15.53
Servarica V3 KVM Fat Slice 4 (4 dedicated cores)	120 GB NVMe	$16.00	None	Same	$16.00
netcup VPS 1000 G12.5	128 GB SSD	€14.02 (€16.68 incl. 19% VAT)	€10.35 (24 months)	Same as the term price	$16.12
netcup VPS 1000 ARM G12.5	128 GB NVMe	€14.02 (€16.68 incl. 19% VAT)	€10.35 (24 months)	Same as the term price	$16.12
HostGator Snappy 4000 NVMe 8	200 GB NVMe	$18.70	$8.36 (24 months)	$18.70	$18.70
Private Hosting VPS-KVM-8GB	80 GB SSD	€16.99	Same price on every term	Same	$19.54
netcup RS 1000 G12.5 (4 dedicated cores)	128 GB NVMe	€21.01 (€25.00 incl. 19% VAT)	€15.52 (24 months)	Same as the term price	$24.16
A2 Hosting Self Managed Linux 8GB	160 GB NVMe	$16.99, then $29.00	$9.99 (36 months)	$29.00	$16.99
HostArmada Unmanaged Fusion	160 GB NVMe	$22.00, then $25.88	$9.67 (12 months)	$21.48	$22.00
netcup VPS Lite 2 G12.5s	160 GB SSD	Not offered	€7.98, €9.50 incl. 19% VAT (3-month minimum)	Same	Not offered
IONOS VPS L+	240 GB NVMe	Not offered	$8 for 3 months (12-month term)	$25.00	Not offered
Bluehost NVMe 8	200 GB NVMe	Not offered	$12.99 (24 months)	$28.99	Not offered
Hostwinds Unmanaged SSD Cloud 5	150 GB SSD	$38.99	None	Same	$38.99
Vultr Regular Cloud Compute	160 GB SSD	$40.00	None, billed hourly	Same	$40.00
Hetzner CPX32	160 GB NVMe	€35.99	None, billed hourly	Same	$41.39
DigitalOcean, Linode	160 GB	$48.00	None, billed hourly	Same	$48.00

The usual Reddit budget, "4 vCPU and 8 GB under $25", is easy to meet in October 2026, and even "under €20" (about $23) leaves ten month-to-month options; only netcup's RS 1000, with dedicated cores at $24.16, drops out. A2 Hosting and HostArmada start under $25 too, but only for the first period: after it they cost $29.00 and $25.88 month to month. What the cheapest options cost you is network and disk. Contabo's Cloud VPS 4 has a 200 Mbit/s port, a fifth of OVH VPS-2's 1 Gbps; the NVMe-based Cloud VPS Plus 4 gets 500 Mbit/s. netcup's Lite plans get a 750 Mbps port that netcup throttles to 100 Mbps whenever the 24-hour average traffic passes 100 Mbps.

If you need 8 GB of RAM but not four cores, Hostinger's KVM 2 (2 vCPU, 8 GB, 100 GB NVMe) costs $8.79 a month on a 24-month term and renews at $14.99. What a gigabyte of RAM costs across every VPS plan we track is in the VPS price per GB of RAM index.

Hetzner's own cheap line, if your location has it

On 23 October 2026 Hetzner's website marks all eight cost-optimized CX and CAX plans "not available" and lists them for Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki only. The page also says "the number of available servers is limited". Whether the Cloud Console lets you create one depends on the location you pick and on the day.

The poster in the 5 October thread found no cost-optimized option in the console at all. Other users report getting them. Where CX23 is offered, it is hard to beat: €5.99 a month with IPv4 and 20 TB of traffic, cheaper month to month than every 2 vCPU / 4 GB server above except OVH's VPS-1 and Contabo's Storage VPS 10. With 4 vCPUs and 8 GB, CX33 costs €8.99 and the Arm-based CAX21 €10.99. Neither line exists in Hetzner's US or Singapore locations.

That leaves a simple test. Open the console, try Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki, and if a CX server is offered, you probably don't need anything else in this article. If none is, CPX22 is the price Hetzner will actually charge you.

Who hasn't raised prices in our nightly data

Among the hosts that undercut CPX22, OVHcloud's 2027 VPS range, HostArmada's Flux, ExtraVM, Time4VPS, Hostwinds and Vultr have shown a single price on every night we have a reading for, up to 23 October 2026. Depending on when our tracking of each began, that is 117 to 217 nights.

Plan	Price held	First reading	Nights with a reading
HostArmada Unmanaged Flux	$5.18 intro, $11.52 renewal (12 months)	12 Feb 2026	217
Hostwinds Unmanaged SSD Cloud 3	$18.99	25 Feb 2026	208
Vultr Regular, 2 vCPU / 4 GB	$20.00	22 Feb 2026	205
ExtraVM VPS 4GB	$14.00	29 Mar 2026	182
OVHcloud VPS-1 and VPS-2 (2027)	€3.81 and €7.21 (12 months)	11 Jun 2026	128
Time4VPS Linux 4	€4.38, renews at €8.76 (24 months)	20 Jun 2026	117

"First reading" is when our tracking of that plan began, not when the provider set the price. We also checked that none of these hosts retired a VPS plan of the same size during the period, because a new plan name is the quiet way to raise a price without touching an existing one.

OVH's line needs a footnote. Its 2027 range was itself a price rise for some sizes when it launched in June: the 4 vCPU / 8 GB configuration moved up a tier name and cost more. That story, along with the American clouds that never moved, is told in full in our roundup of 2026 VPS price increases.

The movers in this group were IONOS, whose regular VPS prices rose on 18 September (M+ from $11 to $14), netcup, covered below, and Servarica, which roughly doubled its Fat Slice prices within a month: Fat Slice 2 went from $5 in mid-August to $6 on 19 August and $9 on 12 September, and Fat Slice 4 from $8 to $10 to $16 on the same dates. Contabo belongs on this list with a caveat. Its Cloud VPS 10 (4 vCPU, 8 GB, 75 GB NVMe) last appeared in our data on 12 August at €3.60 on a 12-month term, and Cloud VPS 4 (4 vCPU, 8 GB, 100 GB SSD) appeared the same day at €4.68 for 12 months. On paper that is a 30% rise under a new name. Our older Contabo record came from a catalogue that we later found lagging behind Contabo's checkout, so we can't vouch for the size or the date. One apparent mover wasn't. Liquid Web's 4 GB plan went from $8.50 to $17 on 15 October, but $17 had been its renewal price all along: the half-price first term ended, and the list price stayed where it was.

None of this tells you what an existing customer is invoiced at renewal, because hosts publish list prices and keep invoices private.

Does your old Hetzner price survive?

It depends which increase you mean. Hetzner's April 2026 notice applied the new prices "for both new orders and existing products", so no Hetzner cloud server kept its March price. The June notice applies only to new orders and rescales, so a server ordered before 15 June keeps its April price until you change it in one of the ways Hetzner lists.

That split explains why people disagree about it. A 21 October post on r/VPS is titled "Hetzner's price lock-in for previous purchases are a lie". It is a link post with no details we could check. What can be checked is Hetzner's cloud billing FAQ, which lists the actions that move a server from its old price to the current one:

• rescaling the server, whether up or down
• restoring a deleted server
• transferring the server to a project billed in a different currency

Rebuilding a server and moving it to another project in the same currency keep the old price. A September thread on r/hetzner worked out what a rescale costs. For a CPX22 ordered before 15 June, it is the jump from €7.99 to €19.49, or €138 a year. For a CX23 it is €18 a year.

Hetzner isn't the only host whose older prices have a limit. OVHcloud's dedicated server pricing update, published on 17 August 2026, applies its new rates to servers already running from 1 October 2026, at each server's renewal date. An Advance-1 Gen 2024 renews at €114.99 instead of €89.99, 28% more. Servers on an outstanding commitment keep their price until it ends, and the Kimsufi, So you Start and Rise ranges, along with generations older than 2024, are not affected.

netcup went the other way. Its price adjustment page says existing contracts "continue under the previous terms" and stay unchanged at the start of each new billing period, and that upgrades within the same generation keep the old terms. An upgrade to the new generation is not possible.

netcup used to be the answer, and it moved too

Until 22 September 2026 netcup was the usual reply to "what's cheaper than Hetzner". That day it replaced its G12 servers with G12.5. netcup's CEO put the increase at up to 40% for the x86 VPS line in a forum post blaming memory prices, and every x86 VPS and root server plan got half the disk. Its VPS 500 (2 vCPU, 4 GB) now costs €6.94 a month excluding VAT on a 12-month contract, or €7.98 month to month.

A late-September reply in an r/VPS thread on Hetzner's price hikes said netcup "is not cheaper than Hetzner now". That holds against CX23 at €5.99, if you can get one. Against CPX22 at €19.99, netcup's VPS 500 still costs about 40% as much month to month. The full G12 to G12.5 comparison is in the 2026 VPS price increases roundup.

For the budget people kept naming after netcup's increase, around €8 to €10 a month, here is what that buys on 23 October 2026:

• 4 vCPU / 8 GB month to month: OVHcloud VPS-2 at €8.49, or Hetzner CX33 at €8.99 where it is offered.
• 4 vCPU / 8 GB with 160 GB of disk: netcup VPS Lite 2 at €7.98 net (€9.50 with German VAT), billed three months at a time.
• 2 vCPU / 4 GB month to month on netcup's regular line, with a 1 or 2.5 Gbit/s port depending on location: VPS 500 at €7.98 net.
• Twice that hardware for less: Contabo Cloud VPS 4 at €5.50, if a 200 Mbit/s port is enough.

What we'd run instead of a new CPX22

For a single 2 vCPU / 4 GB server that might be cancelled next month, we'd take OVHcloud's VPS-1 at €4.49. It is the cheapest month-to-month option in our data on 23 October 2026, its price hasn't moved since it entered our tracking in June, and the daily backup is included. If 40 GB of disk is too little, HostGator's Snappy 2000 gives 100 GB for $9.35 month to month, the same as its renewal price.

• Already on Hetzner with a pre-June server: keep it, and don't rescale it. The FAQ is clear that a rescale in either direction moves you to the current price.
• A database, build runner or self-hosted tools that need cores more than bandwidth: Contabo Cloud VPS 4, 4 vCPU and 8 GB for €5.50, or €4.40 if you can prepay two years.
• US locations and hourly billing: Vultr's Regular plan at $20 for 2 / 4 and $40 for 4 / 8. Both undercut Hetzner's CPX line and haven't moved since February.
• Heavy outbound traffic from Europe: try for a Hetzner CX server first. Its 20 TB is still the most generous allowance in these tables.
• Willing to commit two years: Time4VPS Linux 4 at €4.38 is cheap, but it renews at €8.76, so price it over four years before you sign. The true cost calculator does that sum.

We wouldn't start a new project on CPX22. At €19.99 it costs more than four times what OVH charges month to month for the same cores and RAM, and the plans that used to justify Hetzner's reputation, the CX line, are the ones it can't promise you. The plan-by-plan record for every host above is on the VPS hosting and cloud hosting listings, and the Hetzner vs HostGator and Hetzner vs IONOS comparisons cover two of the closest matches.