Contabo vs Hetzner: which VPS actually fits your workload (2026)

In short: Contabo sells large plans on monthly terms (its smallest has 4 vCPU and 8 GB RAM) and has more locations outside the EU. Hetzner bills by the hour, sells cloud servers with dedicated vCPUs, and includes a fixed traffic allowance instead of a fair-use promise. Both may ask you for documents. For a box you keep for years and that mostly waits, Contabo; for anything that needs steady CPU or lives only for a few hours, Hetzner.

The short answer, by use case

Contabo vs Hetzner at a glance

The rows sum up the pages cited in the sections below. Hetzner’s cloud pages show hourly and monthly prices for the currency and country (VAT) you choose; a script fills them in, they are not written into the pages, so we quote none.

Shared vCPU is where they diverge

Both sell “vCPU”, but a vCPU is not a unit of performance. It is a scheduling slot on a physical core, and how many slots a host sells per core decides how much of it you get when your neighbours are busy. Neither page we read gives that ratio. What they do say:

• Contabo says on its VPS page that Core VPS runs on proven hardware from several CPU generations, chosen for workloads where the CPU is rarely the bottleneck: web hosting, CMS, mail and development. For newer AMD EPYC hardware it points to its Performance VPS line, and for full separation to its VDS line (Max Performance VPS).
• Hetzner splits its cloud in three. Cost-Optimized runs on older Ampere, Intel and AMD generations; its Cost-Optimized page marked every plan “not available” on 11 October 2026. Regular Performance runs on shared resources and newer hardware generations, for low to medium CPU usage, and every plan it lists has AMD vCPUs, per its Regular Performance page. General Purpose gives you dedicated vCPUs for constantly high CPU usage, per its General Purpose page; the smallest, CCX13, has 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM and 80 GB NVMe.

So neither host sells its cheapest plans as dedicated cores. Contabo’s smallest plan starts with more vCPUs and RAM than Hetzner’s; Hetzner offers a step up to dedicated vCPUs, which its General Purpose page says are assigned only to you, without leaving its cloud. A Nextcloud instance, a backup target, a small game server or a lab fits on shared CPUs. A build server or a busy database does better on dedicated ones, at either host.

vmstat 1 60

Billing, terms and price

Contabo bills by term. Its Cloud VPS 4 configurator showed, on 11 October 2026, €5.50 a month before VAT (€6.55 with German VAT) on a one-month term, 15 % off for 12 months and 20 % off for 24, and “No Setup Fee” on every term; on 24 months that is €4.40 a month before VAT. Locations outside the EU cost extra each month: from €1.25 with German VAT for the UK or US Central to €3.03 for Japan, on this plan. Per clause 5 of its terms, a contract renews for the same period unless either side cancels four weeks before the end, and the VPS page adds that prepaid contracts need no notice period.

Hetzner bills its cloud servers by the hour. Its plan pages say a server’s bill never exceeds its monthly price cap, and a server deleted before the month ends is billed only at the hourly rate. Its billing FAQ adds that every started hour counts as a whole one, and the catch: a powered-off server is still billed, so you stop paying only by deleting it. Prices in the US and Singapore differ from those in Europe, per its documentation. Its support FAQ says dedicated servers are billed monthly and must be cancelled to stop the charges, and that some products may include setup fees. Its terms (2.6) set 30 days’ notice to the end of the month, though a service’s description may set a different period. The menu on its cloud page also lists a Server Auction of refurbished dedicated servers.

In practice: for a server that runs all year, Contabo’s monthly or longer terms are simple and its entry plan carries a lot of RAM. For a server that exists for a weekend, or a fleet you create and destroy from scripts, Hetzner’s hourly billing charges only those hours, while Contabo charges at least a month.

Identity checks (KYC) at Contabo and Hetzner

This is the point many people search for, and both hosts have written policies.

• Contabo: per its help article, it is legally required to verify customer data, and some orders get a manual check. You then receive an email headed “Mandatory verification” and reply with your name, address and phone number and a proof of address: a scan of a passport, driving licence or national ID card, or a utility bill that shows your name and address. Clause 3 (4) of its terms reserves the right to ask for evidence when there is reason to doubt a customer’s identity.
• Hetzner: per section 4.6.1 of its privacy policy, every new account goes through a risk assessment, and an employee decides whether it is activated. In individual cases it may ask for a valid identity document, checked by its staff or by the service provider iDenfy, and when reviewing orders it may ask how you plan to use its products. Its terms oblige you to prove your account data on request (2.3) and let it accept or reject an order within five working days (2.4).

Hetzner’s privacy policy names its reasons (4.6.1.3): preventing fraud and payment defaults and protecting its services against misuse. Hosts that take cards lose money to stolen ones, and asking a risky-looking new customer for a document is cheaper than a chargeback. That is the mechanism behind privacy-focused hosting: a host paid in crypto has far less of that risk. The roundup of no-KYC VPS providers compares the hosts that put a no-ID policy in writing.

Payment methods

Contabo takes bank transfer, credit card, PayPal and Skrill, and SEPA direct debit within the EU, though not for a new customer’s first payment, per clause 4 (2) of its terms. Hetzner’s privacy policy (4.6) says you enter card details directly with its external payment provider, Computop; the Hetzner pages we checked name no other method. Neither names a cryptocurrency as a payment method on the pages we checked.

Network, traffic and abuse handling

Traffic. Contabo’s VPS page calls traffic unlimited: inbound is unmetered, outbound falls under a fair-use policy, and Contabo may throttle servers with exceptionally high or disruptive usage. Port speed grows with the plan, from 200 Mbit/s on Cloud VPS 4 to 1 Gbit/s on the largest. Hetzner includes at least 20 TB per cloud server in the EU, 1 TB in the US and 0.5 TB in Singapore, more on larger plans, and charges for each additional TB, per its plan pages; the same pages give no bandwidth guarantee but say you can expect about 300 to 500 Mbit/s. It bills only outgoing traffic and notifies you at 75 % and again at 100 % of the allowance, without capping it, per its billing FAQ. A fixed allowance is easier to plan for than a fair-use clause.

Locations. Contabo serves the EU from five data centres in Germany and adds New York, Seattle, St. Louis, Portsmouth, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney and India, per its locations page. Hetzner’s cloud runs in Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki, Ashburn, Hillsboro and Singapore; its documentation says dedicated root servers cannot be ordered in Ashburn, Hillsboro or Singapore.

DDoS. Both include it: Contabo’s VPS page lists always-on DDoS protection and a firewall with every Cloud VPS, and Hetzner’s DDoS protection page describes automated filtering, available to all customers, free of charge.

Abuse. Contabo’s terms (clause 6) forward a specific third-party complaint to you with a deadline to respond, and allow an immediate block only for obvious abuse; clause 9 forbids spam, IRC servers and programs that wear out hardware or bandwidth. Hetzner’s terms allow it to lock a server and end the contract without notice for (d)DoS attacks or open mail relays (5.2), and forbid spam and mining cryptocurrencies (8.3). They also say it performs no blacklist check of an IP address it allocates (3.5). Whatever you rent, test the address you get with a blacklist check before you send mail from it.

How to actually choose

• Web app, API, database, CI: pay for predictable CPU. Hetzner General Purpose, or another provider’s dedicated cores.
• Storage, backups, media library, lab: Contabo’s large plans suit them, as long as you keep the server for the full term. Compare the price for the size you need on both pages.
• Short-lived environments: hourly billing wins outright.
• Users in America or Asia: Contabo has more regions there; check the surcharge for the one you need.
• Privacy matters to you: check the payment methods and the ID policy before you order, not after.

Weighing OVHcloud as a third option? Our OVH vs Hetzner comparison covers its locations, commitment discounts and support levels against Hetzner’s.

Where we fit

We are smaller than both, and we do not pretend to compete on the price of an 8 GB box or offer billing by the hour; our plans are prepaid by the month. What we do differently is take Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, Litecoin, Monero and more alongside card and PayPal at the same price, never ask for an ID document, and run a Hi-CPU line with fewer vCores per plan on AMD EPYC with ECC memory. That line is still a shared platform with no reserved cores; cores of your own are a dedicated server. Both are ordered in Amsterdam today, and our KVM VPS also runs in Frankfurt, so the same EU rules apply as with either of the above.

To see how our network there reaches you before you order, the looking glass runs ping, traceroute and MTR from Amsterdam to your own address.

If none of that matters for what you are building, one of the two larger providers is very likely the sensible choice, and saying so costs us nothing.

Frequently asked