Hetzner Load Balancer vs Traefik
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Hetzner Load Balancer and Traefik.
Quick Verdict
3.9/5
Hetzner Load Balancer
0 reviews
4.1/5
Traefik
0 reviews
Traefik is rated higher (4.1 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. Traefik is a cloud-native reverse proxy and load balancer designed for microservices and Kubernetes. Auto-discovers services from Docker, K8s, and Consul. Automatic Let's Encrypt.
Hetzner Load Balancer Managed load balancing with Layer 4/7 support and auto-scaling integration | Traefik Cloud-native reverse proxy for microservices | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.9 (0 reviews) | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Starting price | From $7.49/mo | Free tier available✓ |
| 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. | Docker and Kubernetes teams who want TLS, routing and service discovery with minimal configuration work — especially platform teams standardizing on Kubernetes ingress and Gateway API. |
| 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 sourceself hostablekubernetes support |
| Visit Hetzner Load Balancer → | Visit Traefik → | |
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
Traefik
Pros
- + MIT-licensed proxy with the full feature set free for commercial use — no per-service or seat charges
- + Auto service discovery from Docker, Kubernetes, Consul and others with hot-reloaded dynamic configuration
- + Automatic Let's Encrypt TLS across many hostnames, HTTP/2-3, gRPC, WebSockets, TCP/UDP routing
- + Built-in observability: Prometheus/Datadog/StatsD metrics, OpenTelemetry tracing, dashboard and API
- + Long production track record since 2016, active v3.x releases, Gateway API leadership, plugin catalog (Go + WebAssembly)
Cons
- - Commercial Hub tiers are sales-gated with no public pricing; marketplace contracts run $30,000-$50,000/year
- - Advanced auth (OIDC/JWT/OPA), WAF, multi-cluster and FIPS live behind the paid line
- - Dynamic-discovery debugging (middleware ordering, provider state) has a real learning curve
- - No vendor-published benchmarks and no uptime SLA for Hub's managed components
- - Small vendor behind the commercial product; EULA includes license-key verification for paid installs
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