Hostwinds vs Hetzner Cloud
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Hostwinds and Hetzner Cloud.
Quick Verdict
3.4/5
Hostwinds
0 reviews
4.4/5
Hetzner Cloud
0 reviews
Hetzner Cloud is rated higher (4.4 vs 3.4). Seattle-based hosting provider with VPS (Linux and Windows), dedicated servers, and shared hosting. Nightly backups included, 24/7/365 live chat support, and 99.9999% uptime SLA. Affordable starting price. 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
Hostwinds US VPS with nightly snapshots and 24/7 support | Hetzner Cloud Affordable VPS hosting with fast deployment and transparent pricing | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.4 (0 reviews) | 4.4 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | paid |
| Starting price | From $3.29/mo✓ | From $5.99/mo |
| Best for | US small businesses and developers who want responsive 24/7 live support and predictable renewal pricing more than raw speed | 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 | — | 2 vCPU |
| RAM | — | 4 GB |
| Storage | — | 40 GB |
| Bandwidth | — | 20 TB/mo |
| SLA uptime | 100%✓ | 99.9% |
| Data-center count | 2 | 6✓ |
| €/vCPU/mo | — | €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 | — | GermanyFinlandUnited StatesSingapore |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | hourly billingipv6ddos protectionbackups includedwindows availableus datacenterapi access | hourly billingnvme storageipv6ddos protectionbackups includedsnapshotseu datacenterus datacentergdpr compliantterraform providerapi access |
| Visit Hostwinds → | Visit Hetzner Cloud → | |
Hostwinds
Pros
- + 24/7/365 live chat backed by staff with direct access to owned hardware
- + Flat, non-promotional pricing: shared from $3.29/mo, managed VPS from $7.14/mo
- + 99.9999% uptime SLA with 2N-redundant facility design and multi-carrier fibre
- + Owns and operates its own data centres, hardware and network gear
- + Windows and Linux VPS both available; dedicated servers built to order
Cons
- - US-only data centres (Seattle and Dallas) — poor shape for European and Asian audiences
- - Nightly backups are a paid add-on per company docs despite 'included' marketing language
- - No free domain; performance evidence is thin and partly self-published
- - Hourly billing and API access are tagged but unverified on the pages we read
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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