AWS Lightsail vs Hetzner

AWS Lightsail is strongest for AWS ecosystem users. Hetzner is strongest for budget-conscious developers. Here's how they stack up on price, uptime, and support.

Feature	AWS Lightsail	Hetzner
Starting price	$0.8/mo	$0.6/mo
Best for	AWS ecosystem users Predictable bundled pricing Windows workloads	Budget-conscious developers EU-based workloads Self-hosters High-performance dedicated servers
Stated uptime SLA	99.9%	99.9%
Storage	SSD	NVME
Regions	16	6
Managed Kubernetes	No	No
Support channels	AWS Support plans (separate from Lightsail), Community forums, Docs	Ticket, Docs, Community forum
Compliance	SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA eligible	GDPR, ISO 27001
Hidden costs to watch for	Data transfer overage varies significantly by AWS region ($0.09-$0.132/GB) Windows bundles cost 70-90% more than equivalent Linux bundles	Setup fees on dedicated servers (e.g. AX42/AX102 setup fee raised from 39 EUR to 79 EUR in 2026; AX162-R/S setup fee raised from 79 EUR to 159 EUR) Traffic overage billed per GB beyond included pool (20 TB EU, as little as 0.5-1 TB in USA/Singapore regions for some lines) CPX and CCX cloud lines saw very large price increases in the 15 June 2026 adjustment (CCX +2.1x to +2.73x, CPX +2.4x to +2.75x monthly in EU); CX and CAX rose a smaller ~1.3x-1.4x Load Balancer and Volume prices separately increased ~36-39% in an April 2026 adjustment VAT excluded from all listed prices
Last reviewed	2026-07-17	2026-07-18