Vultr Load Balancer vs Hetzner Load Balancer
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Vultr Load Balancer and Hetzner Load Balancer.
Quick Verdict
3.5/5
Vultr Load Balancer
0 reviews
3.9/5
Hetzner Load Balancer
0 reviews
Hetzner Load Balancer is rated higher (3.9 vs 3.5). Vultr Load Balancer distributes traffic across Vultr instances in any of their 33 global regions. Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) with configurable health checks and automatic failover. No SSL termination — TLS must be terminated at the backend. Hourly billing at $0.015/hour. 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.
Vultr Load Balancer Managed Layer 4 load balancer across 33 global regions | Hetzner Load Balancer Managed load balancing with Layer 4/7 support and auto-scaling integration | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.5 (0 reviews) | 3.9 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | paid |
| Starting price | From $10/mo | From $7.49/mo✓ |
| Best for | Teams already on Vultr who want managed failover and health-checked traffic distribution for a single-region cluster and handle TLS on their backends | Teams already running Hetzner Cloud or Hetzner dedicated servers who need a cheap, managed, well-documented entry point with TLS termination and health checks. |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | — | — |
| Storage | — | — |
| Bandwidth | — | 20 TB/mo |
| SLA uptime | 100% | — |
| Data-center count | 33✓ | 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 | hourly billingmanaged optioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter | managed optioneu datacenterus datacenter |
| Visit Vultr Load Balancer → | Visit Hetzner Load Balancer → | |
Vultr Load Balancer
Pros
- + Fully managed with built-in health checks and automatic failover — no balancer VM to patch
- + Simple pricing: from $10/month ($0.015/hour), and bandwidth is charged on attached instances only
- + Available in all 33 Vultr regions, with optional global routing to the nearest healthy server
- + Full API/CLI support, so it fits Terraform and Ansible workflows
- + Works with any TCP/UDP application: web, APIs, game servers, database pools
Cons
- - No SSL termination despite marketing language about certificates — TLS must be handled at the backend
- - Layer 4 only: no path-based routing, header rules, WAF, or rate limiting
- - Balances Vultr instances only, in the same region — no hybrid or multi-provider backends
- - Price varies by data center without a published per-region table
- - DDoS mitigation is not part of the product; it is handled at Vultr's infrastructure level or as a paid add-on
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
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