Hetzner sells two quite different things: cloud instances billed by the hour, and dedicated root servers billed monthly. Both are inexpensive by market standards, and the gap between them is larger than most people expect.
The comparison
| Cloud instances | Dedicated root servers | |
|---|---|---|
| Provisioning | Seconds, via API | Minutes to hours, sometimes setup fee |
| Billing | Hourly, capped monthly | Monthly |
| Scaling | Create and destroy freely | Fixed until you order more |
| Cost at steady load | Higher per unit | Substantially lower per unit |
| Failure handling | Rebuild elsewhere quickly | Hardware failure is your problem to plan for |
Where the crossover sits
Cloud instances are the right choice while load varies, while you are still finding your capacity, or while environments come and go. You are paying for elasticity, and elasticity you use is worth paying for.
Once a workload settles into steady, round-the-clock utilisation, that premium buys nothing. A dedicated machine at a fixed monthly price will typically deliver considerably more CPU and RAM for the same money.
The server auction
Hetzner also runs an auction of previously used dedicated hardware at reduced prices. These are real servers with real specifications, often generous on RAM and disk. The trade-offs are that availability is whatever is listed at the time, hardware generations vary, and you should read the specification carefully rather than assuming.
For batch processing, build farms, storage-heavy workloads and self-hosted services, auction servers are among the cheapest compute available anywhere.
What you take on
Dedicated hardware means dedicated failure modes. A disk will eventually fail. Plan for it:
- Use RAID where the workload justifies it, and know that RAID is not a backup.
- Back up off the machine, ideally off the provider.
- Design for the machine being unavailable rather than assuming it will not be.
- Budget replacement time into your recovery expectations.
Cloud instances hide much of this behind the platform. Dedicated servers do not, and that is part of why they cost less.
A common hybrid
Run the steady core on dedicated hardware, and use cloud instances for bursts, non-production environments and anything short-lived. Private networking connects them, and you get the cost profile of dedicated with the flexibility of cloud where it matters.
Account access
Hetzner’s identity verification is stricter than most and manual review is common, particularly for international customers. Our Hetzner listings cover 5 server, 10 server and open port 25 configurations. Background on the limits and the review is in Hetzner limits and verification.
How it compares
Against OVHcloud, Hetzner is usually cheaper while OVHcloud offers more breadth. Against DigitalOcean, Hetzner wins clearly on price per core. See DigitalOcean vs Hetzner and OVHcloud vs Hetzner.
Common questions
Is there a setup fee on dedicated servers?
It varies by product and promotion. Check the listing.
Can I move data between cloud and dedicated?
Yes, and private networking between them is the normal pattern.
Are auction servers reliable?
They are production hardware, but you should assume the same failure planning as any dedicated machine.