CloudAtCost vs Hetzner Cloud
A detailed comparison to help you choose between CloudAtCost and Hetzner Cloud.
Quick Verdict
1.8/5
CloudAtCost
0 reviews
4.4/5
Hetzner Cloud
0 reviews
Hetzner Cloud is rated higher (4.4 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. German cloud provider offering the best price-to-performance ratio in the market. CX22 (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 40GB NVMe) costs €4.35/month. Loved by European developers for fast NVMe, generous bandwidth, a
CloudAtCost One-time payment VPS — model discontinued (yearly maintenance fee added, then forced monthly billing; website offline as of Oct 2026) | Hetzner Cloud Affordable VPS hosting with fast deployment and transparent pricing | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 1.8 (0 reviews) | 4.4 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | one-time (discontinued) | paid |
| Starting price | From $35/mo | From $5.99/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 | Developers and small teams who want unmanaged Linux infrastructure at the lowest cost per unit of compute, especially for European workloads with data-residency requirements, dev/test environments, CI runners, and price-sensitive production web apps. |
| 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 | 6✓ |
| €/vCPU/mo | €35.00 | €3.00✓ |
| €/GB RAM/mo | — | €1.50 |
| Performance | ||
| CPU score (sysbench) | — | 4,820 |
| Disk read (fio) | — | 2,100 MB/s |
| Disk IOPS (4K random) | — | 42,000 |
| Network out | — | 1 Gbps |
| Latency (TTFB) | — | 18 ms |
| 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) | GermanyFinlandUnited StatesSingapore |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | nvme storageus datacenter | hourly billingnvme storageipv6ddos protectionbackups includedsnapshotseu datacenterus datacentergdpr compliantterraform providerapi access |
| Visit CloudAtCost → | Visit Hetzner Cloud → | |
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 Cloud
Pros
- + Best CPU-per-euro in our 2026-04-01 benchmark run: the CX22 outperformed plans costing up to six times as much
- + Strong NVMe throughput: 2,100-2,400 MB/s sequential reads and 42,000-48,000 random 4K IOPS in our tests
- + Transparent hourly billing with a monthly price cap and no setup fees or contracts
- + Six cloud locations with owned, ISO 27001-certified EU data centers and GDPR-compliant processing
- + At least 20 TB included transfer at EU locations, plus free DDoS mitigation for all customers
- + Mature automation: REST API, Terraform provider, official Go/Python libraries, cloud firewalls and private networks
Cons
- - Backups and snapshots are paid add-ons rather than plan inclusions, which erodes the headline price advantage
- - Email-only support with no phone option and no managed tier for cloud customers
- - Entry plans use shared vCPUs and Hetzner offers no bandwidth guarantee (typical 300-500 Mbit/s stated by Hetzner)
- - No supported Windows installs and a smaller managed-ecosystem than larger providers
- - Default resource limits on new accounts require a support ticket to raise; cost-optimized stock is periodically unavailable
- - Object storage only available in the three European locations
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