Hetzner Cloud vs DigitalOcean (2026)

Hetzner Cloud regularly delivers more CPU and RAM per euro than DigitalOcean, which makes it the default for EU-heavy side projects and homelab overflow. DigitalOcean remains stronger for US-centric latency, global region consistency, and beginner-friendly docs. If your users are primarily in Europe, start with Hetzner and keep DigitalOcean as a US failover. If you sell primarily to US customers or need App Platform adjacency, DigitalOcean is the safer primary. Convert Hetzner euro prices carefully when budgeting in USD.

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Hetzner Cloud

Best for: EU workloads where euro list price and RAM-per-dollar matter more than US tutorial polish.

Watch out: Thin US footprint. Support is email-first and assumes you know Linux. Latency to North America hurts if Falkenstein is your only region.

Check Hetzner pricing

DigitalOcean

Best for: People who want predictable droplet pricing, excellent documentation, and a smooth first-VPS experience with one-click apps and App Platform nearby.

Watch out: Not always the cheapest at scale. Bandwidth overages can add up on high-traffic workloads. Raw $/GB may favor Hetzner, Contabo, or Vultr for heavy transfer.

Check DigitalOcean pricing

Spec snapshot

Comparable entry-tier plans from each provider.

Field	Hetzner Cloud	DigitalOcean
Plan	CX22	Basic Droplet 1GB
vCPU	2	1
RAM	4 GB	1 GB
Disk	40 GB ssd	25 GB ssd
Bandwidth	20.0 TB	1.0 TB
List price	$4.49/mo	$6.00/mo

All tracked plans

Every plan we currently track for both providers.

Provider	Plan	vCPU	RAM	Disk	$/mo
DigitalOcean	Basic Droplet 1GB	1	1 GB	25 GB	$6.00
DigitalOcean	Basic Droplet 2GB	1	2 GB	50 GB	$12.00
DigitalOcean	Basic Droplet 4GB	2	4 GB	80 GB	$24.00
DigitalOcean	CPU-Optimized 4GB	2	4 GB	25 GB	$42.00
Hetzner Cloud	CX22	2	4 GB	40 GB	$4.49
Hetzner Cloud	CX32	4	8 GB	80 GB	$8.49
Hetzner Cloud	CPX21	3	4 GB	80 GB	$9.49
Hetzner Cloud	CPX31	4	8 GB	160 GB	$16.49