The oldest debate in affordable cloud hosting: DigitalOcean, the developer-friendly platform with the best docs on the internet, versus Hetzner, the German provider that sells the same specs for a fraction of the price.
This isn't really a question of which is better — it's a question of what you're buying. Compare them on the dimensions that decide your actual monthly bill.
| DigitalOcean | Hetzner | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Droplets from $4/mo | CPX22 from $7.99/mo; EU CX from ~€3.99/mo |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $24/mo (4 TB transfer) | €7.99/mo (~$9.49, 20 TB in EU) |
| Traffic included | 500 GB–4 TB, pooled per account | 20 TB on EU plans (US regions: 1 TB) |
| Managed databases | Postgres/MySQL/Redis from $15/mo | Thin menu — mostly raw compute |
| Trial / free credit | $200 credit for 60 days (new accounts) | None — you pay from day one |
| Regions | Global, strong US presence | EU + US (Ashburn, Hillsboro) |
| Best for | Teams that want platform depth | Solo devs comfortable running their own box |
Developer-friendly cloud with predictable flat pricing.
Droplets from $4/mo; App Platform free for static sites, from $5/mo; m
Try DigitalOcean →Europe's price king: unbeatable price-per-spec.
From $7.99/mo (CPX22: 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 20 TB traffic in EU); EU CX plans
Try Hetzner →Hetzner wins on raw price by ~60% at the same spec. DigitalOcean wins on everything around the box — managed services, docs, ecosystem. Price-sensitive solo dev? Hetzner. Team or managed stack? DigitalOcean.
Yes — uptime is strong and the hardware is modern. The trade-off is thinner managed services and email-first support, not reliability.
You're paying for US network quality, managed databases, App Platform, Kubernetes, and a documentation library no budget provider matches. Whether that's worth 3–4x depends on your stack.
Yes — both are standard Linux VMs. Snapshot, rsync, or rebuild with Docker/Ansible. Nothing locks you in.