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Hetzner vs DigitalOcean: Which Cloud VPS Fits Your Workload?
At current USD list prices, Hetzner offers the lower-cost similar-size shared-CPU server and more included European outbound traffic. DigitalOcean offers more locations, a stricter published uptime SLA and a broader cloud platform. Price the exact region, IP address, storage, backups and traffic your workload needs.
Similar resources, different trade-offs
This compares configurations, not performance. GB and GiB differ, processors vary, and shared vCPU labels do not establish equal throughput. HostingHunt has not benchmarked either plan.
Hetzner is cheaper in this USD example, but the server price is not the bill
Hetzner's official USD price-adjustment table, effective 15 June 2026, puts the CPX32 at $41.99 per month in Germany and Finland, before tax and without a public IPv4 address. Adding the $0.60 monthly Primary IPv4 charge brings that public-server configuration to $42.59 before backups or extra storage.
DigitalOcean lists its 4-vCPU, 8-GiB Basic Droplet at $48 per month. Bundled Droplets use per-second billing, a 60-second or $0.01 minimum and a 672-hour monthly cap. Hetzner bills hourly, caps monthly charges and rounds up partial hours. Both charge for powered-off servers; deletion stops compute billing.
Traffic matters for bandwidth-heavy workloads. Hetzner includes 20 TB with EU CPX servers. The comparable DigitalOcean plan includes 5,000 GiB; extra Droplet outbound transfer costs $0.01 per GiB. Hetzner includes less traffic in US and Singapore locations.
For backups, Hetzner charges 20% of the server price for seven slots. DigitalOcean adds 20% for weekly or 30% for daily basic backups. DigitalOcean Volumes cost $0.10 per GiB per month; Hetzner bills Volumes hourly with a monthly cap and excludes them from server backups and snapshots.
For TCO, price compute, public IPs, backups, storage and expected outbound traffic in the deployment region. The server rate is only the first line.
Both providers sell shared and dedicated CPU
Hetzner's CX, CPX and CAX plans share physical-server compute, providing baseline performance with temporary burst capacity. CCX plans reserve CPU resources, with one vCPU representing one physical-core thread.
DigitalOcean's Basic Droplets also use shared CPUs. Its General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, Memory-Optimized and Storage-Optimized families use dedicated CPUs with different resource ratios. DigitalOcean also offers v5 configurations that let customers size vCPU, memory and boot disk separately in supported datacenters; Shared v5 uses shared vCPUs, while General Purpose v5 uses dedicated vCPUs.
Shared CPU may suit development, staging, low-traffic applications or bursty workers. Databases, busy applications, sustained builds or latency-sensitive services may justify dedicated CPU. Benchmark the exact plan, region and software stack before moving production.
DigitalOcean gives you more placement choices
Hetzner Cloud servers are available in Germany, Finland, Singapore and the United States. That can be enough when one of those locations is close to the audience and meets the project's data-residency requirements.
DigitalOcean's current matrix lists Droplet plans across 16 datacenter codes in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. That wider footprint helps when the audience, failover design or adjacent services require a specific city.
Measure user latency, confirm required services share the intended region and check whether transfer pricing changes there.
The SLA percentages are not uptime test results
DigitalOcean advertises a 99.99% uptime SLA for Droplets. Hetzner's Cloud Server SLA uses 99.9% monthly availability and provides cloud credits when verified downtime exceeds its threshold, subject to the agreement's exclusions and claim process. DigitalOcean's published percentage is stricter on paper.
That does not prove one will keep a particular application online more often. An SLA defines credit eligibility; it does not measure the reliability of your operating system, database, deployment, backups or code. HostingHunt has no controlled uptime history for either provider and names no reliability winner.
Cost and EU transfer matter most
Choose Hetzner when the workload fits one of its locations, you are comfortable managing the server, and compute plus outbound transfer cost matters more than having the broadest regional footprint. Its European CPX pricing is especially worth modelling for bandwidth-heavy services. Use a dedicated CCX plan rather than assuming a shared plan will sustain constant CPU load.
Visit Hetzner's websiteGeography and platform breadth matter
Choose DigitalOcean when you need a region Hetzner does not offer or a dedicated-CPU family aligned with balanced, CPU-heavy, memory-heavy or storage-heavy workloads. Price the exact required plan and adjacent services alongside the Droplet.
Visit DigitalOcean's websiteHetzner leads on this list-price example; DigitalOcean leads on reach
Hetzner is the stronger list-price option in the similar-size European configuration compared here. DigitalOcean is the stronger fit when geography, a stricter SLA, or the wider cloud platform matters more than the lowest server line item. If the choice affects a production workload, run the same load test on shortlisted plans in the intended regions and compare the full monthly bill before migrating.
What this comparison does not prove
- Prices and product details were checked on 2026-09-06. They can change, vary by currency or region, and exclude applicable tax unless the provider states otherwise.
- Hetzner CPX32 pricing comes from its 15 June 2026 price-adjustment table; CPX32 specifications and EU transfer are corroborated by Hetzner's current cloud plan material. DigitalOcean's Basic plan comes from its current Droplet pricing page.
- SLA percentages come from each provider's own published terms or product page. They are contractual service targets, not HostingHunt uptime measurements.
- HostingHunt has no controlled Hetzner or DigitalOcean benchmark in its current dataset. No CPU, disk, network, uptime, support or revenue outcome is inferred. Read how HostingHunt evaluates providers.
- Affiliate commission, approval rate, cookie window and realised earnings are
no data; they do not influence the verdict. - The general comparison tool displays native currencies and disables cross-currency price scoring. You can now compare more VPS providers without treating EUR values as USD.
Provider evidence used for this comparison
- Hetzner cloud price adjustment, effective 15 June 2026
- Hetzner shared and dedicated resource definitions
- Hetzner cloud server overview and locations
- Hetzner traffic allowances by plan and location
- Hetzner Primary IP pricing
- Hetzner billing and backup pricing
- Hetzner Cloud Server SLA
- DigitalOcean Droplet pricing
- DigitalOcean Droplet plan types
- DigitalOcean plan-selection guidance
- DigitalOcean regional availability
- DigitalOcean bandwidth billing
- DigitalOcean backup pricing
- DigitalOcean Volume pricing
- DigitalOcean Droplet SLA statement