DigitalOcean logo Hetzner logo

DigitalOcean vs Hetzner

DigitalOcean offers simplicity and developer-friendly tools, perfect for startups and small businesses. Hetzner provides robust hardware and competitive pricing, appealing to those needing high performance at a lower cost.

Jump to: What's good Pricing Services Company details Alternatives

What's good about...

DigitalOcean logo DigitalOcean

  • Simple, developer-first cloud
  • Predictable pricing & monthly caps
  • AI platform powered by Paperspace GPUs
  • Vast library of tutorials & 1-click apps

Hetzner logo Hetzner

  • High performance VPS configurations at affordable prices (shared, high memory, dedicated CPU)
  • Easy to use web console & developer tooling (Terraform SDKs, official CLI)
  • EU-based company, may simplify GDPR compliance for some

Price comparison

How do DigitalOcean's prices compare against Hetzner?

VM Small

Closest config to 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$6.00 / mo 1 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM (Basic)
Hetzner Hetzner
$5.14 / mo 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM (CX23)

VM Medium

Closest config to 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$48.00 / mo 4 vCPU, 8 GiB RAM (Basic)
Hetzner Hetzner
$8.01 / mo 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM (CX33)

VM Large

Closest config to 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (dedicated preferred).
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$168.00 / mo 8 vCPU, 16 GiB RAM (CPU-Optimized)
Hetzner Hetzner
$14.31 / mo 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (CX43)

Block Storage

Closest config to 100+ GB SSD, 3,000+ IOPS, 100+ MB/s throughput, no snapshots.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$10.00 / mo 100 GB
Hetzner Hetzner
$5.04 / mo 100 GB

Object Storage

Closest config to 1 TB stored, 100 GB in / 250 GB out, 1M GET, 100k PUT/POST.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$20.00 / mo 1 TiB
Hetzner Hetzner
$5.73 / mo 1 TB

Load Balancer

Closest config to TCP, 1 node (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM), 200+ Mbps, 1,000 conn/sec, 1 TB processed/mo.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$12.00 / mo
Hetzner Hetzner
$7.34 / mo LB11

Managed PostgreSQL

Closest config to 1 node, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 50+ GB storage, 10 GB read / 5 GB write per month.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$60.00 / mo 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 60 GB storage
Hetzner Hetzner
--

Managed Redis®*

Closest config to 1 node, 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 10 req/s, 1 KB avg request size.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$15.00 / mo 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM
Hetzner Hetzner
--

Serverless 25M Executions

Closest config to 25M invocations, 150ms execution time, 512 MB memory.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$34.69 / mo 25M invocations, 512 MB RAM, 150 ms duration
Hetzner Hetzner
--

Free egress allowance

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
100 GB - 10 TB / mo per instance
Hetzner Hetzner
1-60 TB / mo per instance

1 TB of egress beyond allowance

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$10.00 $0.01 / GB
Hetzner Hetzner
$1.15 €1 / TB

GPU Fleet Overview

Starting Price

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$0.76/hr
Hetzner Hetzner
$0.33/hr

Billing Options

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
On-DemandReserved (12mo)
Hetzner Hetzner
On-Demand

Available Models

DigitalOcean offers 8 GPU models, while Hetzner offers 2.

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
H100(3) H200(2) L40S(1) B300(1) RTX 6000 Ada(1) MI300X(3) RTX 4000 Ada(1) MI325X(1)
Hetzner Hetzner
RTX 6000 Ada(1) RTX 4000 Ada(1)

Heads up: We do our best to keep these specs & prices accurate. However, cloud costs may fluctuate based on region, usage, and other factors not listed here. These are estimates based on common setups and are for informational purposes only. Always verify current rates & exact specs with the provider before provisioning.

Thunder Compute Logo
Thunder Compute
Our sponsor
NVIDIA H100 from $1.38/hr, A100 80GB from $0.78/hr, RTX A6000 from $0.27/hr
No commitments, billed per minute, SOC 2 and GDPR compliant
Hot swappable hardware, templates for ComfyUI and Ollama
One-click connection to VS Code or Cursor, simple CLI to connect without SSH
Try now

Which services do they offer

Here are some managed services that DigitalOcean and Hetzner offer:

Service DigitalOcean Hetzner
Block Storage
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Container Registry
GPU-powered Servers
Load Balancer
Managed Containers
Managed Kubernetes
Managed MySQL
Managed PostgreSQL
Managed Redis®*
Object Storage
Serverless Cron Jobs
Serverless Functions
Static Sites
Virtual Private Server (VPS)

Company details

Website
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
digitalocean.com
Hetzner Hetzner
hetzner.com
Headquarters
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
United States of America
Hetzner Hetzner
Germany
Founded
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
2011
Hetzner Hetzner
1997
Data Center Locations
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
14
Hetzner Hetzner
6
Example Customers
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
Crisp, ScraperAPI, GHost, and CTO.ai
Hetzner Hetzner
Outdooractive, Bitdefender, Userlike, Whereby, Autodoc

Alternatives to consider

Compare DigitalOcean and Hetzner against other cloud providers.

View all comparisons

Our data for DigitalOcean was last updated on June 22, 2026, and for Hetzner on June 11, 2026.

Thunder Compute Logo
Thunder Compute
Our sponsor
NVIDIA H100 from $1.38/hr, A100 80GB from $0.78/hr, RTX A6000 from $0.27/hr
No commitments, billed per minute, SOC 2 and GDPR compliant
Hot swappable hardware, templates for ComfyUI and Ollama
One-click connection to VS Code or Cursor, simple CLI to connect without SSH
Try now