Hetzner vs AWS for Solo Developers

Comparing Hetzner and AWS for solo developers. Features, pricing, pros and cons, and which one to pick for your next project.

Quick Comparison

Feature	Hetzner	AWS
Type	European VPS and dedicated servers	Full cloud platform (240+ services)
Entry pricing	CX22 from EUR 4.49/mo (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 40GB NVMe, 20TB traffic)	t3.medium about $30.37/mo on-demand in us-east-1 (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM)
Free starter	None (low flat price instead)	New accounts: up to $200 credits, expires in 6 months
Included traffic	20TB/mo on every cloud plan	First 100GB/mo egress free, then $0.09/GB
Learning Curve	Moderate (DIY Linux)	Steep
Best For	Budget VPS with excellent performance	Enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure
Solo Dev Rating	8/10	5/10

By the Numbers (2026)

The prose below is opinion. These are the verified facts as of late May 2026, so you can sanity-check the rest against real numbers.

Hetzner Cloud (CX22, the entry shared-vCPU plan)

Price: EUR 4.49/month after the April 1, 2026 price adjustment (was EUR 3.29 to EUR 3.79 depending on location before that). The increase moved most cloud plans up by roughly 25 to 33 percent.
Specs: 2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 40GB NVMe disk.
Traffic: 20TB outbound per month included on the plan, with overage billed only beyond that.
Hourly billing available at about EUR 0.0050/hour if you tear servers down.
Locations: Germany (Nuremberg, Falkenstein), Finland (Helsinki), US (Ashburn VA, Hillsboro OR), and Singapore (added August 2024).

AWS (t3.medium, the closest comparable general-purpose instance)

Price: $0.0416/hour on-demand in us-east-1, which works out to about $30.37/month at 730 hours. The instance carries 2 vCPU and 4 GiB memory.
Data transfer: first 100GB/month of internet egress is free across the account, then $0.09/GB for the next 10TB tier, stepping down at higher volumes.
Free starter: accounts created on or after July 15, 2025 get up to $200 in credits ($100 on sign-up plus $100 earned through onboarding tasks) that expire after 6 months or when spent. Accounts created before that date keep the legacy 12-month free tier with 750 hours/month of t3.micro and similar always-free allowances.
Global footprint: 123 Availability Zones across 39 geographic regions, with more announced.
Catalog: AWS advertises more than 240 fully featured services.

Neither product is open-source software, so there are no GitHub stars or npm download figures to report here. Both are commercial infrastructure providers, and the meaningful comparison is price, specs, and reach, all of which are above.

Hetzner Overview

Hetzner is the European hosting provider that delivers the best price-to-performance ratio in the industry. For EUR 4.49 per month (the CX22 plan, after Hetzner's April 2026 price adjustment), you get a VPS with 2 vCPUs, 4GB RAM, 40GB NVMe storage, and 20TB traffic. Even after that increase, try finding that deal on any other major cloud provider. You can't.

The appeal is pure economics. A Hetzner dedicated server with 64GB RAM and a Ryzen processor costs what a medium AWS EC2 instance costs. For solo developers who can manage their own servers, Hetzner stretches every dollar further than any alternative.

I run production workloads on Hetzner. The uptime has been excellent, the network is fast in Europe, and the simple pricing means I never worry about surprise bills. You provision a server, SSH in, and you own it. No hidden costs, no metered API calls, no bandwidth surcharges that appear three weeks later.

AWS Overview

AWS is the everything platform. 200+ services covering compute, storage, databases, AI, networking, IoT, and things you didn't know existed. It powers Netflix, Airbnb, and roughly a third of the internet. The capabilities are limitless.

For solo developers, that power comes with a cost: complexity. The AWS console is overwhelming. IAM policies feel like a second job. Pricing calculators exist because you genuinely cannot predict your bill. I've seen solo developers rack up unexpected charges from services they forgot to turn off or didn't realize had usage-based pricing.

That said, AWS does things no one else can. If you need managed Kubernetes, AI/ML infrastructure, global CDN, or specific compliance certifications, AWS has it. The free tier is generous enough to learn and prototype without spending anything, though it changed in 2025: accounts created on or after July 15, 2025 get up to $200 in credits that expire after 6 months, replacing the old always-on 12-month allowances. Older accounts keep the legacy 12-month free tier.

Key Differences

Pricing transparency. Hetzner's pricing is flat and predictable. EUR 3.79/month gets you a known set of resources. No surprises, no usage-based billing that fluctuates. AWS pricing is notoriously complex. Compute, storage, bandwidth, API calls, and cross-region data transfer all add up in ways that are hard to predict. Solo developers have been burned by unexpected AWS bills more times than anyone can count.

Managed services vs. DIY. AWS offers managed versions of everything: RDS for databases, ElastiCache for Redis, SQS for queues, Lambda for serverless functions. Hetzner gives you a server and says "good luck." If you want PostgreSQL on Hetzner, you install it yourself. If you want backups, you configure them. The tradeoff is real: AWS saves ops time, Hetzner saves money.

Server performance per dollar. Hetzner wins this comparison decisively. A Hetzner CX22 (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM) costs EUR 4.49/month. The closest AWS equivalent, a t3.medium (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM), costs $30.37/month on-demand in us-east-1. That is roughly 6x the cost for comparable specs, before AWS adds egress and storage charges on top. Even with a reserved or savings-plan commitment, AWS is significantly more expensive at this size.

Global infrastructure. AWS spans 123 Availability Zones across 39 geographic regions worldwide, with more announced. Hetzner has data centers in Germany, Finland, and the US (Ashburn and Hillsboro), plus a Singapore region for cloud servers. If you need servers concentrated in Asia, South America, or Australia, AWS is your only practical option here. Hetzner's geographic reach is limited by comparison.

Learning curve. Hetzner's learning curve is Linux system administration. You need to know how to set up firewalls, install software, configure SSL, and manage updates. AWS's learning curve is AWS itself. IAM, VPCs, security groups, and the sheer number of services create a different kind of complexity. Both require knowledge, just different kinds.

Scaling path. AWS scales infinitely. Add more instances, enable auto-scaling groups, use Lambda for serverless. Hetzner scales by upgrading your VPS or adding more servers and load balancing yourself. For solo developers, Hetzner's manual scaling is usually fine because you're not Netflix. But if your project explodes in traffic, AWS handles that growth more gracefully.

Real Cost at Solo-Dev Scale

Headline prices hide the gap. Here is what one small always-on production app actually costs each month on both, computed from the real published rates above.

The workload. One app server running around the clock (730 hours), 2 vCPU and 4GB RAM, a 40GB disk, and 500GB of outbound traffic per month. That is a modest but realistic side project or early SaaS: a web app, its database on the same box, and some asset and API traffic going out.

On Hetzner (CX22). The plan is flat at EUR 4.49/month. The 40GB NVMe disk is included. The 500GB of traffic sits comfortably inside the 20TB monthly allowance, so it adds nothing. Total: EUR 4.49/month, roughly $5 at current exchange rates. The number does not move whether you push 500GB or 5TB, as long as you stay under 20TB.

On AWS (t3.medium in us-east-1). Three line items stack up:

Compute: $0.0416/hour times 730 hours equals $30.37.
Storage: a 40GB gp3 EBS volume at $0.08/GB-month equals $3.20.
Egress: 500GB out minus the first 100GB free leaves 400GB at $0.09/GB, which is $36.00.

Total: about $69.57/month, and that is before load balancers, snapshots, NAT gateway hours, or any managed service. Note that the egress line ($36) alone costs more than seven months of the entire Hetzner server.

The takeaway. For this workload Hetzner runs about 14x cheaper, and the multiple gets worse as traffic grows because Hetzner's traffic is effectively free up to 20TB while AWS keeps metering every gigabyte at $0.09. The crossover where AWS becomes worth the premium is not price; it is when you genuinely need a managed service, a region Hetzner does not serve, or compliance Hetzner cannot certify. Pay for those on purpose, not by accident.

When to Choose Hetzner

Budget is a primary concern and you want maximum performance per dollar
You're comfortable with Linux server administration
Your users are primarily in Europe or the US East Coast
You want simple, predictable monthly billing
You're running Docker, K3s, or Coolify for deployment

When to Choose AWS

You need managed services (RDS, ElastiCache, SQS) to reduce ops work
Your application requires global infrastructure across many regions
Compliance certifications (HIPAA, SOC 2, FedRAMP) are requirements
You want the free starter credits (up to $200 over 6 months on new accounts) to learn and prototype
Your project might need to scale rapidly and unpredictably

The Verdict

For solo developers who can manage a Linux server, Hetzner is the obvious choice. The price-to-performance ratio is unmatched. You can run a full production stack (web server, database, Redis, monitoring) on a single Hetzner VPS for under EUR 10/month. Try doing that on AWS.

AWS makes sense when you need specific managed services, global regions, or compliance certifications that Hetzner can't provide. But for the vast majority of solo developer projects, those requirements don't exist. You're paying for enterprise infrastructure you don't need.

My recommendation: start with Hetzner. Learn to manage a VPS, deploy with Docker or Coolify, and keep your hosting costs under $10/month. If your project grows to the point where managed services and global distribution become necessary, migrate specific components to AWS. Until then, pocket the savings.