CloudAtCost vs Hetzner ARM (Ampere)
A detailed comparison to help you choose between CloudAtCost and Hetzner ARM (Ampere).
Quick Verdict
1.8/5
CloudAtCost
0 reviews
4.3/5
Hetzner ARM (Ampere)
0 reviews
Hetzner ARM (Ampere) is rated higher (4.3 vs 1.8). CloudAtCost offers VPS with a one-time payment — no monthly fees. Pay once, use forever. Canadian company with Toronto datacenter. Not recommended for production workloads but unique pricing model. CAX plans start at 2 vCPU / 4GB RAM / 40GB NVMe; launch pricing was €3.79/month incl. IPv4 (April 2023), currently listed from €6.49/month incl. IPv4
CloudAtCost One-time payment VPS — model discontinued (yearly maintenance fee added, then forced monthly billing; website offline as of Oct 2026) | Hetzner ARM (Ampere) Arm64 cloud servers on Ampere Altra cores in Hetzner Cloud's cost-optimized line | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 1.8 (0 reviews) | 4.3 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | one-time (discontinued) | paid |
| Starting price | From $35/mo | From $6.49/mo✓ |
| Best for | Nobody today. Historically it served hobbyists wanting throwaway always-on servers for the lowest possible one-time cost — a use case better served now by cheap monthly VPS from providers that still exist | Containerised, open-source, scale-out workloads in Europe — web farms, CI runners, build machines, dev environments — where price per core beats single-thread speed |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | 1 vCPU | 2 vCPU✓ |
| RAM | — | 4 GB |
| Storage | 10 GB | 40 GB✓ |
| Bandwidth | — | 20 TB/mo |
| SLA uptime | 99.99%✓ | 99.9% |
| Data-center count | 1 | 3✓ |
| €/vCPU/mo | €35.00 | €3.25✓ |
| €/GB RAM/mo | — | €1.62 |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | Ontario, Canada (Kitchener-Waterloo / Toronto area) | NurembergFalkensteinHelsinki |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | nvme storageus datacenter | hourly billingnvme storageipv6ddos protectionbackups includedsnapshotseu datacentergdpr compliantapi accessarm processors |
| Visit CloudAtCost → | Visit Hetzner ARM (Ampere) → | |
CloudAtCost
Pros
- + Historically unique model: one-time payments ($35-$140) for always-on VPS with resource-pool slicing
- + Canadian (Ontario) footprint — genuinely useful latency-wise for Canadian users
- + Permissive use policies made it a favorite for throwaway workloads, learning boxes, and exit nodes
- + VMware ESXi virtualization and a simple self-service panel were workable for the price
Cons
- - Website is offline (verified 2026-10-23: www.cloudatcost.com has no DNS record) — nothing is purchasable
- - The lifetime promise was broken: $9/year maintenance fee, then forced monthly billing on paid-up resources
- - Customers report locked servers, removed resources without consent, and complaints filed with the Ontario Securities Commission
- - Thrift-grade performance (old Xeons, ~25 MB/s disk I/O in user benchmarks) and widely reported multi-day outages
- - Hollow 99.99% SLA (credits only after 24h outages, claimed individually, at company discretion) and near-nonexistent support
Hetzner ARM (Ampere)
Pros
- + Cheapest way to buy Hetzner compute per core
- + Real server silicon — Ampere Altra (Neoverse-N1), ECC RAM, NVMe
- + Hourly billing with monthly cap, 20TB included traffic, free IPv6
- + Free automated DDoS protection and the full Hetzner Cloud API/platform
- + Mature arm64 software ecosystem covers most open-source stacks
Cons
- - x86 and Arm are separate worlds — no rescale, backup or snapshot crossover
- - Cost-Optimized placement means limited stock and EU-only locations for CAX
- - Launch-era pricing is gone; entry cost has risen
- - Shared vCPUs and modest single-core speed
- - Backups and snapshots cost extra; unmanaged servers
Stay in the loop
Get weekly updates on the best new hosting and infrastructure providers, deals, and comparisons.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.