Hetzner is a German hosting company with a reputation built almost entirely on price
and reliability rather than marketing. Among developers who care about what a server
actually costs, it is frequently the answer. If you want to buy Hetzner account access, this page lists three configurations, from $50 to $250.
Overview: why Hetzner occupies a distinct position
Hetzner operates its own data centres in Germany and Finland, with additional capacity
in the United States and Singapore. Like OVHcloud it owns its infrastructure rather than
leasing it, and the result is pricing that is consistently among the lowest available
from any established provider.
The trade-off is scope. Hetzner offers servers, storage, networking and load balancing
— not a catalogue of hundreds of managed services. For teams who want a machine and
know what to do with it, that is a feature. For teams who want managed everything, it is
a genuine limitation and a hyperscaler is the better answer. Hetzner’s
official documentation
covers the product range.
Available Hetzner account configurations
The table below is the complete list. Read it as the menu you choose from when you buy Hetzner account configurations on this page — each row is priced and specified independently, so nothing is bundled or assumed.
| Configuration | Price |
|---|---|
| Hetzner 5 Server Account | $50 |
| Hetzner 10 Server Account | $90 |
| Hetzner Open 25 Port Account | $250 |
Hetzner 5 Server Account — $50
Capacity for five servers. Enough for a realistic production shape with room to
breathe: an application server, a database, a staging environment, a worker and one
spare for whatever emerges.
Hetzner 10 Server Account — $90
Ten servers. The natural choice for agencies running separate infrastructure per
client, or for teams whose architecture has already split into several services with
separate staging environments.
Hetzner Open 25 Port Account — $250
References port 25 availability for outbound SMTP. As across the industry, outbound
port 25 is restricted by default because it is the channel through which mail is
delivered directly to recipient mail servers, and unrestricted access is the main vector
for outbound abuse.
An account where it is available can run a mail transfer agent that delivers directly.
That is legitimate architecture for self-hosted mail systems, and it carries real
obligations — Hetzner’s acceptable use terms apply, anti-spam law applies, and
correct SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are mandatory in practice if mail is to arrive at
all. Where the requirement is application email rather than operating a mail server, a
managed service such as Amazon SES is the
better architecture and will almost certainly deliver more reliably.
Key features
The points below summarise what distinguishes these options for anyone about to buy Hetzner account configurations for the first time.
- Three configurations at 5, 10 and port-25-enabled server allocations.
- Owned European data centres in Germany and Finland.
- Among the lowest cost per unit of compute from any established provider.
- Included traffic allowances that are generous relative to hyperscaler egress pricing.
- Clean API, CLI and Terraform provider for automation.
Hetzner product lines
Hetzner Cloud
Virtual servers provisioned in seconds, billed hourly to a monthly cap. Shared-vCPU
and dedicated-vCPU lines exist, along with ARM-based instances that are cheaper again for
software that runs on ARM. This is the product most people mean when they talk about
Hetzner today.
Dedicated root servers
Physical machines with no virtualisation layer. Hetzner’s dedicated line is where its
price advantage is most pronounced — the specifications available at a given
monthly cost are frequently well beyond what equivalent virtual capacity would cost
elsewhere. Suited to sustained heavy workloads and to software licensed per physical
core.
Server auction
A distinctive Hetzner offering: previously used dedicated hardware sold at reduced
rates. The specifications vary with whatever is available, and machines come and go, but
for workloads that need raw capacity rather than a specific configuration, the value can
be substantial.
Storage Box and volumes
Storage Box provides large-capacity network storage accessible over standard protocols
— a straightforward backup target. Volumes attach directly to cloud servers as
block storage.
Networking
Private networks keep inter-server traffic off the public internet. Load balancers
distribute traffic across servers. Firewalls filter at the network level rather than
relying solely on host configuration.
Who should buy Hetzner account configurations
- Small teams and individual developers — Hetzner 5 Server Account ($50).
- Agencies and multi-service architectures — Hetzner 10 Server Account ($90).
- Organisations operating their own mail infrastructure — Hetzner Open 25 Port Account ($250).
- Anyone with European data-residency requirements — any configuration, with location chosen accordingly.
Common use cases
Cost-efficient production hosting
Running a real application on infrastructure that costs a fraction of hyperscaler
equivalents. For a business whose margins matter, and whose workload does not need a deep
managed-service catalogue, this is the central argument for Hetzner.
Self-hosted software
GitLab, Nextcloud, Mattermost, monitoring stacks, media servers. Hetzner is
disproportionately popular for self-hosting because the economics make running your own
tooling genuinely cheaper than paying per-seat for hosted equivalents.
Build and CI infrastructure
Self-hosted runners on dedicated hardware, avoiding per-minute hosted CI pricing.
Build workloads are CPU-hungry and predictable, which is exactly where dedicated hardware
economics are strongest.
Data processing and batch work
Jobs that need substantial CPU for hours at a time. Dedicated servers or the auction
line make this affordable in a way that on-demand hyperscaler compute rarely is.
Backup and archival targets
Storage Box as an off-site backup destination, particularly for organisations whose
primary infrastructure sits elsewhere.
Choosing the right configuration
Start with an honest server count. Five covers a single application with staging and
a worker. Ten covers several services or several clients. The step from $50 to $90
doubles capacity for less than double the price, so if there is any prospect of exceeding
five, the ten-server configuration is the more sensible starting point.
The port 25 configuration is a different decision entirely. At $250 it costs
substantially more, and the difference buys one specific network capability rather than
more servers. Choose it only if you have identified a genuine need to run outbound SMTP
directly.
Technical considerations
Locations and residency
Hetzner’s primary locations are Nuremberg and Falkenstein in Germany and Helsinki in
Finland, with Ashburn and Hillsboro in the United States and a Singapore location. If
European data residency is your reason for choosing Hetzner, select a European location
explicitly rather than assuming.
Backups and snapshots
Automated backups are an opt-in paid feature on cloud servers; snapshots are manual.
Neither is on by default. Dedicated servers have no automatic backup at all, so a backup
strategy is entirely your responsibility there. This is one of the places where the low
price reflects a genuine shift of work onto the customer.
Support expectations
Hetzner support is competent and responsive on infrastructure matters — hardware,
network, provisioning. It is not an architecture consultancy, and it does not troubleshoot
your application. That is a reasonable trade at the price, but it is worth understanding
before committing production workloads.
Automation
The Hetzner Cloud API is clean and well documented, with an official CLI and a
maintained Terraform provider. Because servers provision in seconds, ephemeral
infrastructure is genuinely practical here.
Getting started
- Add SSH keys and disable password authentication immediately — public IPs attract automated attacks within minutes.
- Create a private network and place servers inside it so internal traffic stays private.
- Configure firewalls to permit only the ports you actually serve.
- Enable backups or establish a snapshot routine before putting real data anywhere.
- Create a non-root user with sudo and stop using root for routine work.
- Enable automatic security updates on the operating system.
- Set up monitoring, particularly disk utilisation alerts.
Cloud servers, dedicated servers and the auction line
Hetzner sells three quite different things, and choosing the wrong one is the most
common way to end up paying more than necessary or getting less performance than
expected.
Cloud servers
Virtual machines that provision in seconds and bill hourly to a monthly cap. Shared
vCPU plans suit workloads that idle between requests; dedicated vCPU plans give
consistent performance for sustained work. ARM instances are cheaper again where the
software supports them. This is the right default for anything that needs to scale up and
down, for staging environments, and for infrastructure you might destroy next week.
Dedicated root servers
Physical machines, billed monthly, provisioned in hours rather than seconds. The
specification available at a given price is markedly better than equivalent virtual
capacity, so for a workload that runs flat out around the clock the economics are
compelling. The trade-offs are provisioning time, a monthly commitment, and the fact that
hardware failure is a real event you must design around rather than an abstraction the
platform hides.
The auction line
Previously deployed dedicated hardware offered at reduced rates as it becomes
available. Because inventory is whatever happens to be free, you cannot rely on a
specific configuration being there when you need it. It suits capacity-hungry,
fault-tolerant work — batch processing, build farms, storage nodes — where
one machine going away is an inconvenience rather than an outage.
A common practical split
Many Hetzner estates mix all three: dedicated hardware for the steady core, cloud
servers for anything variable or short-lived, and auction machines for bulk batch
capacity. That mix is usually cheaper than committing entirely to any one line.
What the low price actually costs you
Being straightforward about this matters more than selling the price advantage,
because the trade is real and it is not right for every team.
Operational responsibility shifts to you. There is no managed
database service to fall back on, no managed Kubernetes control plane, no serverless
layer. Patching, backups, monitoring, failover and recovery are yours to design and to
run. For a team with someone who enjoys that work, this is fine and the savings are real.
For a team without one, the savings evaporate into unplanned incidents.
Backups do not exist unless you create them. Cloud server backups are
a paid opt-in; dedicated servers have none at all. This is the single most common way
people get hurt on inexpensive infrastructure.
There is no multi-region abstraction. Running in several locations
means building that yourself — replication, failover, DNS steering. The platform
will not do it for you.
Support scope is infrastructure only. Hardware and network issues get
competent attention. Your application does not. That is a fair trade at the price, but it
should be a conscious one.
None of this argues against Hetzner. It argues for choosing it deliberately: when the
workload is understood, the team can operate it, and the money saved is better spent
elsewhere. Where those conditions do not hold, a managed platform such as
AWS or
Google Cloud is genuinely the more
economical choice once staff time is counted.
Planning a Hetzner estate
Two practical decisions shape most Hetzner deployments, and both are easier to make
deliberately at the start than to unwind afterwards.
How many servers, and how large?
The configurations set a server count; sizing each one is separate. The usual failure
mode is spreading a workload thinly across many small machines because the count is
available, when a smaller number of larger servers would perform better and be simpler to
operate. Memory is normally the binding constraint rather than CPU, so size for the
working set your database and application runtime actually need, then add headroom.
A reasonable default shape for a small production system: one server for the
application, one for the database, one for staging, and one spare for whatever emerges.
That fits comfortably in the five-server configuration. Agencies running isolated
infrastructure per client, or teams whose architecture has split into several services
each with a staging counterpart, reach ten quickly.
Location and latency
Hetzner’s German and Finnish locations serve European users with low latency and place
data under European jurisdiction. The US and Singapore locations exist but do not carry
the same jurisdictional properties, so if residency is the reason you chose Hetzner,
choose the location explicitly rather than accepting a default. Servers cannot be moved
between locations directly — relocating means rebuilding — which makes this
worth a few minutes of thought upfront.
Building resilience on inexpensive infrastructure
Because Hetzner does not hide hardware failure behind a managed abstraction,
resilience is something you design rather than something you buy. The good news is that
the cost savings usually fund it comfortably.
Assume a machine will fail
Dedicated hardware fails, and when it does the recovery is yours to perform. Anything
that must stay available needs either a warm standby or a tested rebuild process. The
cheapest useful version of this is configuration management — Ansible, or a
provisioning script in version control — so that recreating a server is a command
rather than an archaeology exercise.
Separate backups from the thing being backed up
A backup on the same machine, or in the same location, protects against fewer failure
modes than people assume. Storage Box in a different location, or an off-platform target
entirely, is the version that survives a bad day. Test a restore at least once; an
untested backup is an assumption.
Keep state in as few places as possible
Applications that hold sessions in local memory and uploads on local disk are painful
to rebuild and impossible to load-balance. Pushing state into a database and object
storage early costs little and makes every later decision simpler — scaling
horizontally, replacing a failed machine, moving between locations.
Monitor the boring things
Disk utilisation, certificate expiry and backup success are responsible for more
avoidable incidents than any exotic failure. Alerting on those three covers most of what
actually goes wrong on a small estate.
Important considerations
Server count is not server size. The configurations state how many
servers, not their specifications. Sizing determines performance and is a separate
question — confirm anything your project depends on before ordering.
Low cost shifts work to you. Fewer managed services means more
operational responsibility: backups, patching, monitoring and recovery are yours. That is
the trade, and it is a good one only if someone is going to do that work.
Port 25 is a network condition, not a deliverability outcome. Whether
mail arrives depends on authentication records, sending reputation and list quality. No
configuration changes that.
Provider terms apply. See Hetzner’s
terms and conditions,
which govern acceptable use including outbound mail.
Prices are per configuration, exactly as listed.
Frequently asked questions
Which configuration should I choose?
Match the configuration to the workload rather than to the price. Most people who buy Hetzner account configurations start from the smallest option that covers their current need and move up once real usage is measured, which avoids paying for headroom that never gets used. The comparison sections above set out the trade-offs; the FAQ page covers ordering questions.
Is it safe to buy Hetzner account configurations listed here?
Every configuration on this page states its specification and price exactly as supplied, and nothing is implied beyond what is written. Anything your project depends on that is not named should be confirmed on the contact page before you buy Hetzner account configurations.
Why is Hetzner so much cheaper than the hyperscalers?
It owns its data centres and hardware, operates in locations with favourable power
costs, and offers a much narrower product range. You are paying for servers rather than
for a catalogue of managed services.
Is Hetzner suitable for production?
For a large share of workloads, yes — many established companies run production
on it. Where it stops being the right answer is when you need managed services, global
multi-region architecture or specific accelerator hardware.
What is the server auction?
Previously used dedicated hardware offered at reduced rates. Availability varies with
whatever machines are free, so it suits workloads that need capacity rather than one
exact specification.
Do I get backups automatically?
No. Backups are an opt-in paid feature on cloud servers and are not provided at all on
dedicated servers. Plan your own backup strategy from the start.
Does the Open 25 Port configuration guarantee delivery?
No. It makes outbound SMTP possible. Delivery depends on SPF, DKIM and DMARC records,
reverse DNS, sending reputation built gradually over time, and genuine recipient consent.
How does Hetzner compare with OVHcloud?
Both are European, both own their infrastructure, and both compete on price. Hetzner
is generally simpler and cheaper on small cloud servers; OVHcloud has a broader product
range and more locations. See Buy OVHcloud
Account to compare directly.
Can I run Kubernetes?
There is no managed Kubernetes service, but self-managed clusters on Hetzner Cloud are
common and there is good community tooling for it. If you want a managed control plane,
Linode or
DigitalOcean provide one.
How do I order?
Select the configuration above, add it to the cart and complete checkout through the
configured cryptocurrency gateway.
Where to buy Hetzner account configurations
Everything needed to buy Hetzner account configurations is on this page — the full list of 3 options, the price of each, and the specification each one carries.
Every configuration described above can be ordered directly from this page. Select the one you need in the selector at the top, add it to the cart and complete checkout — there are 3 configurations listed, $50.00 – $250.00. Checkout collects only a name and an email address, and payment runs through the cryptocurrency gateway configured on this site.
If you are unsure which option fits, describe the workload on the contact page before ordering rather than after — it is usually possible to narrow the list quickly. Common questions are collected on the FAQ page.
What you get when you buy Hetzner account
Every listing on this page is a specific, named configuration rather than an open-ended arrangement. When you buy Hetzner account here you are choosing one of the 3 configurations described above, at the stated price $50.00 – $250.00, with the specification exactly as written.
- The exact configuration named in the selector, with no substitutions.
- The price shown, with no added fees at checkout.
- A checkout that asks only for a name and an email address.
- Direct contact before ordering if you are unsure which option fits.
If you are comparing providers rather than configurations, the Cloud Accounts and Cloud Infrastructure categories list the alternatives side by side. If you already know what you need, you can buy Hetzner account configurations directly from the selector at the top of this page.
Related products
Compare with OVHcloud,
DigitalOcean,
Linode,
UpCloud and
Atlantic in the
Cloud Infrastructure category. For
managed platform services see Cloud
Accounts, or get in touch via the contact page.
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