Who should choose Hetzner?

Teams that want european cloud and dedicated servers

Who should choose AWS?

Teams that want amazon web services cloud platform

Software comparison - Hosting Platforms

Hetzner vs AWS: 2026 Comparison

Hetzner and AWS represent two philosophies of cloud. Hetzner offers straightforward VMs and bare metal with transparent, predictable pricing across European datacenters, while AWS provides a bewildering array of services built for global scale and architectural flexibility. Pick Hetzner if you want simplicity and cost savings for standard workloads; pick AWS if you need deep ecosystem integration and don't mind complexity. [compare](/compare) the fit carefully.

Comparison dimensions

Dimension	Hetzner	AWS	Winner
DX & Deploys	8/10Hetzner's API is clean and consistent; deploying a VPS takes minutes and their CLI tools are developer-first, though lacking AWS's breadth of managed services.	8/10AWS's DX is improving but remains daunting—hundreds of services, each with their own model. Once you find the right service combo, automation is powerful.	Tie
Performance	7/10Hetzner's dedicated server performance is exceptional for the price, with low-latency European infrastructure and predictable SSD speeds across bare metal.	8/10AWS's global edge and highly optimized infrastructure win on pure speed, but you pay a premium for that performance and must right-size instances carefully.	AWS
Pricing	9/10Hetzner crushes AWS on price—your bill stays flat month to month because you buy capacity upfront, not metered usage, making budgeting straightforward.	8/10AWS's pricing is opaque; reserved instances and spot pricing help, but most teams overspend because they don't monitor usage or understand their bill's drivers.	Hetzner
Scaling	9/10Hetzner auto-scaling is available but rudimentary; better for steady-state workloads that don't spike. Manual scaling works fine for seasonal variation.	8/10AWS's scaling is elastic and responsive—load balancers, ASGs and event-driven compute mean your infrastructure reacts to demand automatically in seconds.	Hetzner
Integrations	8/10Hetzner integrates with Terraform and common tools well, but the ecosystem is smaller; you won't find specialist managed services like Hetzner RDS.	8/10AWS integrations are endless—every SaaS and monitoring tool plugs in natively, and the managed service catalog means less operational toil for databases and caches.	Tie
Support	8/10Hetzner's support is responsive and knowledgeable; issues are often resolved by humans, not automated responses, which smaller teams really appreciate.	8/10AWS support tiers vary widely; free tier is minimal, and paid support is expensive relative to Hetzner, though they do offer premium SLAs for mission-critical workloads.	Tie

DX & Deploys

Hetzner: Hetzner's API is clean and consistent; deploying a VPS takes minutes and their CLI tools are developer-first, though lacking AWS's breadth of managed services.

AWS: AWS's DX is improving but remains daunting—hundreds of services, each with their own model. Once you find the right service combo, automation is powerful.

Performance

Hetzner: Hetzner's dedicated server performance is exceptional for the price, with low-latency European infrastructure and predictable SSD speeds across bare metal.

AWS: AWS's global edge and highly optimized infrastructure win on pure speed, but you pay a premium for that performance and must right-size instances carefully.

Pricing

Hetzner: Hetzner crushes AWS on price—your bill stays flat month to month because you buy capacity upfront, not metered usage, making budgeting straightforward.

AWS: AWS's pricing is opaque; reserved instances and spot pricing help, but most teams overspend because they don't monitor usage or understand their bill's drivers.

Scaling

Hetzner: Hetzner auto-scaling is available but rudimentary; better for steady-state workloads that don't spike. Manual scaling works fine for seasonal variation.

AWS: AWS's scaling is elastic and responsive—load balancers, ASGs and event-driven compute mean your infrastructure reacts to demand automatically in seconds.

Integrations

Hetzner: Hetzner integrates with Terraform and common tools well, but the ecosystem is smaller; you won't find specialist managed services like Hetzner RDS.

AWS: AWS integrations are endless—every SaaS and monitoring tool plugs in natively, and the managed service catalog means less operational toil for databases and caches.

Support

Hetzner: Hetzner's support is responsive and knowledgeable; issues are often resolved by humans, not automated responses, which smaller teams really appreciate.

AWS: AWS support tiers vary widely; free tier is minimal, and paid support is expensive relative to Hetzner, though they do offer premium SLAs for mission-critical workloads.

Best for Hetzner

Teams that want european cloud and dedicated servers
Users prioritizing performance
Growth-stage teams

Best for AWS

Teams that want amazon web services cloud platform
Users prioritizing dx & deploys
Growth-stage teams

Decision notes

Choose Hetzner if you're running a monolith or microservices without complex requirements and want predictable costs. Choose AWS if you're building for scale or need specialized services like AI/ML or global CDN. [explore](/resources/hosting)

Export/import support between Hetzner and AWS
Team onboarding and learning curve
Pricing at your seat count
Integration coverage for your stack

Frequently asked questions

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