Hetzner Load Balancer vs Envoy Proxy
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Hetzner Load Balancer and Envoy Proxy.
Quick Verdict
3.9/5
Hetzner Load Balancer
0 reviews
4.2/5
Envoy Proxy
0 reviews
Envoy Proxy is rated higher (4.2 vs 3.9). Hetzner's managed load balancer distributes TCP and HTTP(S) traffic across Hetzner Cloud and dedicated root server targets, with configurable health checks, SSL termination and sticky sessions. From €7.49/month, hourly billed. Envoy is an open source L7 proxy and service mesh foundation. Used as the data plane in Istio, AWS App Mesh, and Consul Connect. High performance, built for microservices and Kubernetes.
Hetzner Load Balancer Managed load balancing with Layer 4/7 support and auto-scaling integration | Envoy Proxy Cloud-native proxy and service mesh sidecar | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.9 (0 reviews) | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | free |
| Starting price | From $7.49/mo | Free✓ |
| Best for | Teams already running Hetzner Cloud or Hetzner dedicated servers who need a cheap, managed, well-documented entry point with TLS termination and health checks. | Platform engineering teams on Kubernetes standardising ingress, mesh and egress traffic management on one open data plane, with the in-house or vendor expertise to own a control plane. |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | — | — |
| Storage | — | — |
| Bandwidth | 20 TB/mo | — |
| SLA uptime | — | — |
| Data-center count | 6 | — |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | Falkenstein (DE)Nuremberg (DE)Helsinki (FI)Ashburn, VA (US)Hillsboro, OR (US)Singapore (SG) | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | managed optioneu datacenterus datacenter | free tieropen source |
| Visit Hetzner Load Balancer → | Visit Envoy Proxy → | |
Hetzner Load Balancer
Pros
- + Cheap for a managed load balancer: LB11 at €7.49/month with 20 TB EU included traffic and a Primary IPv4 included
- + Targets both Hetzner Cloud servers and dedicated root servers over public or private IPv4
- + Solid HTTP feature set: TLS termination with managed certificates, sticky sessions, HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect, proxy protocol
- + Per-service health checks (HTTP/HTTPS/TCP) with configurable interval, timeout, retries and expected responses
- + Hourly billing with monthly cap, six locations across four network zones, first-class API/Terraform/Kubernetes integration
Cons
- - Only Round Robin and Least Connections — no IP-hash, weighting, or L7 path-based routing rules
- - No request logging at all; no WAF or bot management; no built-in autoscaling
- - HTTPS services forward plain HTTP to targets; end-to-end TLS requires a TCP service and loses HTTP features
- - Hetzner targets only (no multi-cloud or on-prem backends); load balancers are bound to a single location
- - No product-level SLA or credits and no published throughput figures per plan
Envoy Proxy
Pros
- + Free forever: Apache 2.0, no seats, no per-node licence, no usage metering
- + CNCF graduated with neutral governance and multi-vendor support options
- + xDS APIs are the de facto standard control-plane interface for service meshes and gateways
- + Depth of features: HTTP/3, gRPC-aware load balancing, circuit breaking, external auth, rate limiting, hot cert rotation
- + Documented support window (four minor versions patched) and a decade of production track record
- + Extensive observability hooks: stats, tracing headers, structured access logs
Cons
- - Configuration complexity is high; production-grade setups need a control plane or serious in-house expertise
- - No SLA or commercial support bundled — community support only
- - Sidecar overhead (latency and memory per proxy) is a real cost in large mesh deployments
- - C++ codebase narrows the pool of people who can debug core-level issues
- - Troubleshooting spans both Envoy docs and whatever control plane generates your config
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