Hetzner — €500 in credits for Startups
European cloud hosting with the best price-performance ratio — dedicated servers and cloud VMs at a fraction of AWS cost.
Reviewed within 48 hours
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Deal Highlights
What Is Hetzner?
Hetzner is the German cloud and dedicated server provider with the best price-performance ratio in the industry — offering cloud VMs, dedicated servers, managed Kubernetes, and object storage at 3–5x lower cost than AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure for equivalent compute. A Hetzner CX22 (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM) costs €3.29/month. The equivalent AWS t3.medium costs ~€35/month.
For startups where cloud cost is a meaningful budget constraint (bootstrapped companies, high-compute workloads, EU data residency requirements), Hetzner provides production-grade infrastructure at prices that extend runway by months.
What''s Included in the Hetzner Startup Deal
- €500 in Hetzner Cloud credits
- Cloud servers: VMs from €3.29/month (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 40GB SSD)
- Dedicated servers: Bare-metal from €39/month (Intel Core i7, 64GB RAM, 2x 512GB NVMe)
- Managed Kubernetes: k3s-based managed K8s clusters
- Object storage: S3-compatible storage
- Load balancers, firewalls, and private networks
- German data centers: Nuremberg, Falkenstein, Helsinki — EU data residency
- No egress fees within Hetzner network
Key Features for Startups
3–5x Cheaper Than AWS
The price difference is not marginal. Hetzner CX22 (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM): €3.29/month. AWS t3.medium (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM): ~€35/month. For a startup running 5 servers, that is €16.45/month on Hetzner vs €175/month on AWS. Annual savings: ~€1,900. The €500 credit covers 150+ months of a single CX22 instance.
EU Data Centers — GDPR by Default
All Hetzner data centers are in Germany and Finland. Data never leaves the EU. For startups with EU customers requiring GDPR-compliant data processing, Hetzner provides the data residency guarantee without special configuration.
Dedicated Servers — Bare-Metal Performance
Hetzner''s dedicated servers provide actual hardware (not virtualized VMs) starting at €39/month — a price point where AWS charges for a single medium-sized VM. For compute-intensive workloads (video processing, ML training, database servers), dedicated hardware provides consistent performance without noisy-neighbor effects.
Hetzner vs AWS vs DigitalOcean vs OVHcloud
| Factor | Hetzner | AWS | DigitalOcean | OVHcloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest VM | €3.29/month | ~€10/month | $4/month | €3.50/month |
| Dedicated servers | From €39/month | From ~€500/month | No | From €50/month |
| Managed K8s | Yes | Yes (EKS) | Yes (DOKS) | Yes |
| EU data residency | Germany, Finland | EU regions (US company) | Netherlands | France (company) |
| Egress fees | No (within Hetzner) | $0.09/GB | Included (generous) | No (within OVH) |
| Service breadth | Basic (compute, storage, K8s) | 200+ services | Moderate | Moderate |
| Startup credits | €500 | $5,000 | $5,000 | €5,000 |
| Best for | Cost optimization, EU hosting | Maximum services | Simple cloud | EU dedicated hosting |
Hetzner wins on price-performance and EU data residency. AWS wins on service breadth. DigitalOcean wins on developer experience. OVHcloud wins on dedicated server variety.
Tips to Maximize Your Hetzner Credits
- Use Hetzner for compute-heavy workloads — The cost savings are largest on compute. A workload costing €500/month on AWS costs €100/month on Hetzner. Migrate compute-intensive services first.
- Keep data in Hetzner''s network — No egress fees within Hetzner. Storing data on Hetzner and serving it from Hetzner eliminates the bandwidth costs that make AWS bills unpredictable.
- Use dedicated servers for databases — Dedicated hardware provides consistent disk I/O and memory without virtualization overhead. A €39/month dedicated server outperforms a €100/month cloud VM for database workloads.
- Pair Hetzner with Cloudflare — Cloudflare CDN (free) in front of Hetzner servers provides global edge caching and DDoS protection. Hetzner handles compute; Cloudflare handles global delivery.
- Use Hetzner for ML training — Hetzner''s dedicated GPU servers (NVIDIA A100, RTX 4090) cost a fraction of AWS GPU instances. For batch ML training that does not need on-demand scaling, Hetzner GPUs provide massive cost savings.
Who Is This Deal For?
Early-Stage Startups
Seed and pre-seed companies looking to move fast without overspending on tools.
Growing SaaS Teams
Series A+ companies scaling their stack and optimizing software costs.
Solo Founders
Indie hackers and bootstrapped founders who need enterprise tools at startup prices.
Get €500 in credits off Hetzner
Apply now — reviewed within 48 hours.
!Eligibility Requirements
Startup needing cost-effective EU hosting
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about this startup deal.
Yes. Hetzner has been operating since 1997 and hosts millions of servers. Many European startups and open-source projects (Mastodon instances, Nextcloud deployments) run production on Hetzner. Uptime is comparable to major cloud providers.
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