Hetzner Dedicated

What Hetzner Dedicated actually is

Hetzner's dedicated root servers are single-tenant physical machines sold through the Robot panel, with full root access and no virtualization layer. The lineup runs on named lines rather than a single catalog: AX (AMD Ryzen/EPYC), EX (Intel), SX (storage-dense), DX (Dell, heavy computing), and GEX (NVIDIA GPU), plus a Server Auction of refurbished stock with floating prices. Our database entry for this product claimed servers start at €39/month and that locations span Europe and the US — both wrong, and we correct them below. The real floor for a new server is €59/month, and every dedicated box is in Europe.

The value proposition has been consistent for years: unusually generous hardware per euro, published prices with published setup fees, and no sales conversation required. The current entry model, the AX41, is an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 with 64 GB DDR4 and 2x 512 GB NVMe on a 1 Gbit/s port with unlimited traffic for €59/month and zero setup fee. For comparison, that RAM and storage allocation is what many providers charge €100+ for in dedicated form. Hetzner can do this because it builds its own data centers, buys hardware at scale, and staffs support accordingly — which is the trade-off we return to below.

The administrative model is old-school and we mean that as praise. Robot gives you a rescue system, VNC and image installers, reverse DNS management, 24h reset service, traffic statistics, a stateless packet-filter firewall, and vSwitch VLANs to interconnect servers across locations. There is an API and extensive docs. There is no hand-holding: you install the OS (Debian, Ubuntu, AlmaLinux, Rocky, openSUSE, Arch, CentOS Stream, or Windows Server 2025 as a paid license) and you run it.

Pricing: what you really pay

All prices below exclude VAT and come from Hetzner's published configurator pages. The AX41 and EX44 lines start at €59/month with no setup fee — that is the cheapest new dedicated server Hetzner sells. The AX42 (AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8700GE, 64 GB DDR5 ECC, 2x 512 GB NVMe) runs €79–99/month plus a €49 setup fee depending on configuration. AX102 configs span €159–259/month (€129 setup), AX162 configs €319–614/month (€304 setup), and the GPU GEX line runs from €214/month plus €209 setup for a single NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell up to €3,599/month plus €3,599 setup for a GEX430 with 4x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q. Refurbished Server Auction machines currently start at €65.70/month, with prices moving by availability.

Setup fees are real money on the bigger lines and should be amortized in any comparison: a €304 setup on an AX162 is effectively €25/month in year one. Hourly billing exists (an AX41 is €0.0945/hour, capped at the monthly rate), so short-lived dedicated capacity is viable.

The fine print is where Hetzner's pricing has changed most recently. Traffic is unlimited and free on the standard 1 Gbit/s uplink; servers with the 10 Gbit/s addon include 20 TB and are charged €1.00/TB beyond that, for outgoing traffic only. Primary IPv4 addresses are now optional and billed separately (you can run IPv6-only to skip the cost) — the exact IPv4 fee is set in the configurator, and add-ons are published: an extra single IP at €1.70/month, failover IPs at €4.20/month, IP subnets from €13.60/month for a /29, and Remote Hands at €21.00 per quarter hour. Backup storage is not bundled; the usual pairing is a Storage Box from €3.20/month for 1 TB.

Net effect: a competent production server — AX41, IPv4, a 1 TB Storage Box — lands around €63/month plus VAT with zero setup. In the dedicated market that is close to the floor, and the pricing page tells you everything without a quote.

Performance & infrastructure

The hardware is current-generation rather than clearance stock: Zen 4 Ryzen 7 PRO parts in the AX42, DDR5 ECC in the newer lines, NVMe across the board, and optional 10 Gbit/s uplinks. For most single-node workloads — databases, virtualization hosts, game servers, build machines — an AX41 or AX42 delivers performance that no similarly priced virtual machine can touch, because nothing is shared and the NVMe devices are yours alone. Readers tracking our cloud benchmarks at our benchmark results know we rate Hetzner Cloud's virtual machines highly on price-performance; the dedicated line extends the same economics one layer down to the metal.

The network is the part competitors struggle to match at this price: a redundant Juniper-routed backbone with 50.12 Tbit/s of total bandwidth, free DDoS filtering (Arbor/Juniper scrubbing plus, since March 2026, Nokia Deepfield Defender edge mitigation), and a published minimum network availability of 99.9%. IPv6 is included as a /64 subnet with every server. The data center parks in Nuremberg, Falkenstein, and Helsinki are ISO 27001:2022 certified and run on 100% renewable electricity.

One constraint worth internalizing: dedicated root servers are available only in Falkenstein and Helsinki for most lines (some lines list Nuremberg), and Hetzner's own docs state you cannot order a dedicated root server in its US or Singapore locations — those exist for cloud products only. For European and latency-tolerant global workloads this is fine; for latency-sensitive US or Asian users it is a real limitation. The vSwitch feature partially compensates by letting you link servers across locations over VLAN.

Where it falls short

Support is the honest weak point. Basic support includes free hardware replacement and re-imaging, free phone and email support, and 24/7 on-site technicians — but no managed administration, no proactive monitoring beyond the 24h system monitor, and response times that are slower than what premium managed providers deliver. If you cannot solve a boot failure or kernel panic yourself (or via the rescue system), Hetzner is the wrong choice; its support organization is built for self-sufficient operators. Remote Hands at €21 per quarter hour is the escalation path for physical work.

Availability is the second caveat. Popular configurations go out of stock, older generations disappear from the configurator, and setup on new orders can take days when demand spikes. There is no reserved-capacity guarantee — you order what is available. The Server Auction mitigates this but with second-hand hardware and changing prices.

Third, the product is unmanaged by design. OS patching, security hardening, backups, and monitoring are entirely yours. Hetzner sells a separate Managed Server line and a Storage Box for backups, but nothing is included here — no snapshots, no backup space, no control panel unless you install one. The stateless firewall is basic packet filtering, not an IDS.

Finally, pricing nuance: the shift to separately billed IPv4 and the June 2026 price adjustment mean any historical comparison needs to be redone against the current configurator. Nothing is hidden — Hetzner's price pages are unusually transparent — but the headline "from" price is no longer the whole bill.

Who should pick this

We pick Hetzner dedicated when the workload needs guaranteed single-tenant hardware and the operator can run it: European SaaS backends, database and storage hosts, virtualization boxes, game servers, CI fleets, and agencies consolidating client sites. The value case is strongest in Europe (GDPR data residency in Germany and Finland, cheap latency to EU users) and for teams that already like Hetzner Cloud and want bare metal in the same network — Hetzner load balancers can even target dedicated servers directly.

We would look elsewhere when you need managed operations, US/Asia-Pacific bare metal, guaranteed rapid provisioning of exact configurations, or contractual uptime credits beyond the 99.9% network figure. In those cases a provider like Hivelocity or a hyperscaler's bare-metal offering trades price for service depth. For everyone else, our view is that Hetzner's dedicated line remains the price-performance reference point for European bare metal.

Key takeaways

• Real entry price is €59/month (AX41: Ryzen 5 3600, 64 GB DDR4, 2x 512 GB NVMe, 1 Gbit/s unlimited traffic, no setup fee), not the €39 our database previously listed.
• Lines span AX/EX/SX/DX/GEX plus a refurbished Server Auction; GPU servers run €214 to €3,599/month; setup fees up to €3,599 apply on the largest configs.
• Europe-only: Falkenstein, Nuremberg, and Helsinki data center parks (ISO 27001:2022); Hetzner explicitly does not sell dedicated root servers in its US or Singapore locations.
• Network is a strength: 50.12 Tbit/s Juniper backbone, free DDoS protection (Nokia Deepfield Defender since 2026), IPv6 /64 included, minimum 99.9% network availability.
• Fully unmanaged: no backups, snapshots, or management included; primary IPv4 is billed separately; backup space starts at €3.20/month for 1 TB Storage Box.
• Our pick for self-sufficient teams wanting the most hardware per euro in Europe; the wrong choice if you need managed services or non-EU bare metal.

Sources

• https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax41/
• https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax42/
• https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-ax/
• https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-ex/
• https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-gpu/
• https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/
• https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud/general/locations/
• https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/general/traffic/
• https://docs.hetzner.com/general/infrastructure-and-availability/price-adjustment/