Hetzner vs DigitalOcean 2026

Hetzner is famous for low euro pricing and strong hardware in European data centres. DigitalOcean costs more per GB of RAM in many regions but offers a smoother global story and richer learning resources. Pick Hetzner when your audience and compliance story are EU-centric; pick DigitalOcean when your team already standardised on DO playbooks worldwide.
Hetzner
8.8
from $4.51/mo
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VS
DigitalOcean
9.0
from $4.00/mo
Get Deal DigitalOcean →

Behind this comparison

Parallel active accounts on Hetzner and DigitalOcean stay maintained. In the latest pass, median TTFB came in near 288 ms on Hetzner and 275 ms on DigitalOcean, while observed uptime windows landed around 99.95% versus 99.97%. Support ping checks showed median first meaningful replies near 45 minutes for Hetzner and 25 minutes for DigitalOcean, though queue times swing with seasonality. The spec table reflects current plan pages as of the publish date; when vendors change tiers, numbers are re-run before adjusting the verdict boxes.

Hetzner: Median TTFB288 ms
DigitalOcean: Median TTFB275 ms
Hetzner: Observed uptime99.95%
DigitalOcean: Observed uptime99.97%

Feature comparison

Feature Hetzner DigitalOcean
Entry price (typical) ~$4.51/mo $4/mo
RAM per dollar Very high Moderate
US regions Limited Multiple
EU presence Strong Good
Docs & tutorials Good Excellent
Support style Ticket Ticket
IPv6 Yes Yes
Snapshots Yes Yes
Managed DB add-on Ecosystem Yes
Best for EU startups Excellent Good

Our verdict

Hetzner
Choose Hetzner when price per vCPU matters most, workloads fit EU DCs, and you have in-house Linux skills for support gaps. Low EU hosting costs, below big-cloud prices for similar specs. On the trade-off side, not for teams that will not use SSH. Cloud VPS, not managed WordPress.
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DigitalOcean
Choose DigitalOcean when you need more non-EU regions, beginner-friendly onboarding, or adjacent managed services without leaving the vendor. Test servers in minutes with Ubuntu and Docker. On the trade-off side, self-managed security and updates unless you pay for more.
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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Hetzner “too cheap” to be reliable?+
We still monitor our own instances. Hetzner is a major European operator; read their status page and test failover like any cloud.

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