DigitalOcean vs Hetzner

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

Feature	DigitalOcean	Hetzner
Starting price	$3.39/mo	$0.6/mo
Best for	Developers Startups Kubernetes	Budget-conscious developers EU-based workloads Self-hosters High-performance dedicated servers
Stated uptime SLA	99.99%	99.9%
Storage	SSD	NVME
Regions	15	6
Managed Kubernetes	Yes	No
Support channels	Ticket, Community forum, Docs	Ticket, Docs, Community forum
Compliance	SOC 2, GDPR	GDPR, ISO 27001
Hidden costs to watch for	Bandwidth overages billed at $0.01/GB past pooled allowance	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	2026-07-01	2026-07-18