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 used to sell the same specs for a fraction of the price — until its June 2026 price hike rewrote the math.
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 | CPX02 from €5.99/mo (~$7.49); CX23 €5.49/mo when in stock |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $24/mo (4 TB transfer) | €19.49/mo CPX22 (~$22.99 incl. IPv4); CX23 €5.49/mo if available (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 budget cloud after the June 2026 price hike: the cheap CX line survives, the CPX line no longer is.
CX23 from €5.49/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB, EU — often out of stock since Oct 2
Try Hetzner →Hetzner no longer wins on raw price by default: after the June 2026 hike, a CPX22 (€19.49/mo, ~$22.99 incl. IPv4) costs about the same as a $24 DigitalOcean Droplet at 2 vCPU / 4 GB. Hetzner still wins if you can land a CX23 (€5.49/mo) and your traffic is heavy — 20 TB included in the EU versus 4 TB on DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean wins on everything around the box: managed services, docs, ecosystem, and guaranteed availability. Price-sensitive EU solo dev with patience for CX stock? 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.