Contabo vs Hetzner (2026)

Updated 2026-07-19 · Independent affiliate site (disclosure)

Head-to-head comparison

Both are unmanaged European providers, so you run the operating system yourself either way. The plans below are the popular entry tiers people actually compare: Hetzner Cloud CX23 against Contabo VPS S. Specs verified on each provider's pricing page on 2026-07-19.

The pattern is consistent. Contabo wins every "how much do I get" row (RAM, cores, storage, bandwidth, datacenter count), and at price parity that side of the ledger is stronger than ever. Hetzner wins every "how fast and reliable is it" row (disk consistency, network, provisioning, support, uptime, automation). That single trade-off decides the whole comparison.

Where these numbers come from

To be straight about the evidence: we run production sites on Hetzner today and have managed client workloads on Contabo in the past, so the day-to-day characterizations here are first-hand. We have not run a formal side-by-side benchmark of these two plans, so we do not publish synthetic IOPS or TTFB figures as if we had.

• Specs and prices: taken from each provider's public pricing page on 2026-07-19, including Hetzner's June 2026 repricing.
• Hetzner reliability: uptime on our own production Hetzner boxes, tracked via UptimeRobot at a 1-minute interval.
• Disk and network characterizations: our hands-on experience plus the consistent pattern in public community benchmarks and user reports (VPSBenchmarks-style trackers, r/hetzner, LowEndTalk): Hetzner's NVMe is fast and steady, Contabo's is slower and more variable under load.
• Provisioning and support: Hetzner's under-a-minute provisioning is our repeated experience; Contabo's 1-to-24-hour window is its own documented expectation for new orders, and slow support replies at peak are widely reported.

When Hetzner wins

Hetzner is the default pick for most people, and the reasons are measurable.

• Disk consistency. Hetzner's NVMe is fast and, more importantly, steady; Contabo's is consistently reported (and in our client work, experienced) as slower and more variable under load. WordPress, Postgres, MySQL, and anything that touches disk on every request feels this. Slow disk shows up as slow admin pages and slow queries under load.
• Latency. Hetzner runs its own backbone (AS24940) out of Falkenstein, Nuremberg, and Helsinki, and EU round-trips are low and stable. Contabo's latency is more variable because the price point attracts denser packing and more noisy neighbors.
• Provisioning. Under 60 seconds via the console or Cloud API. Contabo can take 1 to 24 hours, particularly on first orders that hit manual review. If your workflow spins servers up and down, this gap is painful.
• Automation. A real Cloud API plus an official Terraform provider. Infrastructure-as-code on Hetzner is a solved problem; on Contabo it is not.
• Reliability and support. 99.99% uptime on our monitored production Hetzner boxes and ticket replies in hours. Contabo users regularly report slower-disk windows, and its support replies run slower, multi-day at peak.

When Contabo wins

Contabo is not a worse provider, it is a different deal. The whole proposition is more RAM and cores per euro, and that genuinely wins for a real set of jobs.

• Raw capacity per euro. 8 GB RAM and 4 vCPU for EUR 5.50/mo is hard to beat, and now that Hetzner's entry plan costs the same EUR 5.49, Contabo hands you double the resources for identical money. If your bottleneck is "I need more cores and memory and I don't care about millisecond latency," this is no longer a one-euro premium, it is free.
• Throughput batch work. Compile jobs, CI pipelines, video transcoding, and large scrapes care about total cores and memory, not per-request latency. Contabo's extra capacity directly shortens these jobs.
• Storage and bandwidth headroom. 75 GB NVMe and 32 TB traffic give you room for log-heavy, data-heavy, or download-heavy work without paying for the next tier.
• Lab and self-hosted servers. A home-lab clone, a media server, or a personal tooling box benefits from cheap cores and RAM, and nobody is waiting on a page to render.

The honest limit: the moment a human is waiting on a response, Contabo's slower disk and higher latency cost you more than the extra RAM and cores are worth.

Our recommendation by use case

Skip the deep dive and jump to your use case.

The clean rule: build farms, CI, and scrapers go to Contabo; WordPress, apps, ecommerce, and anything user-facing goes to Hetzner. If you are unsure, default to Hetzner, because a fast server can do batch work acceptably, but a slow server cannot do user-facing work acceptably.

Honesty disclosures

We use Hetzner's referral program. If you sign up via our Hetzner link, you get EUR 20 in account credit when you spend EUR 10, and we get EUR 10 in credit after that. It is a mutual-credit referral, not a one-way commission, and the price you pay is identical. We disclose it this way because it is the most honest framing of how we monetize Hetzner.

We are not a Contabo affiliate. The Contabo link on this page points to contabo.com directly with no tracking parameters. We do not earn a commission on Contabo. When we recommend it for build farms, CI, or scrapers, that recommendation is purely on merit, we make nothing if you sign up.

Pricing reality check

Hetzner repriced its whole lineup in June 2026, citing rising DRAM costs, and the entry tier moved from the old CX22 at EUR 4.50 to the CX23 at EUR 5.49. Contabo VPS S sits at EUR 5.50. That puts the two entry plans one cent apart, which changes the framing of this comparison: Contabo used to cost a euro more for double the resources; now it costs the same. Per gigabyte of RAM and per core, Contabo wins by roughly 2x, and that is real. The question is whether you can use those extra resources, or whether they sit idle behind a slower disk and noisier network.

For batch work you can use every core, so Contabo's price-per-core is the right metric and Contabo wins outright. For a website serving one request at a time, the relevant metric is how fast that single request completes, and there Hetzner's steadier disk and lower latency mean the CX23 serves pages faster despite having fewer cores. Idle RAM does not speed up a page; fast, consistent disk does.

Two cost details that surprise people. First, Hetzner bills a small fee per IPv4 address (around EUR 0.50/mo, on top of the prices above), so an IPv6-only server is the cheapest option. Second, both providers offer larger plans with the same character: if you outgrow these tiers, the trade-off does not change, Hetzner scales up as the fast option and Contabo scales up as the high-capacity option. Note also that Hetzner's June 2026 increase hit its dedicated-vCPU CCX line much harder than the shared line, so if you were eyeing dedicated cores, re-check those prices before assuming Hetzner is cheap there.

Migrating between the two

Because both are unmanaged Linux providers, moving in either direction is the same job: provision the new server, copy your stack, repoint DNS. There is no proprietary panel lock-in on either side. If you are leaving Contabo because pages feel slow, plan for the DNS cutover to be the only downtime, since the Hetzner side provisions in under a minute. If you are moving to Contabo for a batch fleet, remember to order a day ahead because provisioning can take up to 24 hours on a fresh account.

A common pattern we like: run the user-facing site on Hetzner and the heavy background jobs on Contabo, connected over a private overlay or plain SSH. You get Hetzner's speed where users feel it and Contabo's cheap cores where they do not. That split is often better than forcing one provider to do both jobs.

FAQ

Which is better, Contabo or Hetzner?

For anything latency-sensitive or user-facing (WordPress, web apps, APIs, dashboards), Hetzner is better: faster and steadier disk, lower latency on its own network, instant provisioning, and an excellent uptime record. Contabo is the better pick only when you need maximum RAM and cores per euro for non-latency workloads like build farms, CI runners, and scrapers, where its now price-parity spec advantage wins.

Is Contabo cheaper than Hetzner?

On specs per euro, clearly yes. The headline prices are now essentially identical: Contabo VPS S is EUR 5.50/mo for 8 GB RAM, 4 vCPU, 75 GB NVMe, 32 TB traffic; Hetzner CX23 is EUR 5.49/mo for 4 GB RAM, 2 shared vCPU, 40 GB NVMe, 20 TB traffic. Contabo gives double the RAM and cores for the same money, but its per-core speed, disk consistency, and reliability are lower, so the spec advantage only wins on bulk batch work.

Why is Hetzner faster than Contabo?

Architecture, mostly. Hetzner runs its own datacenters and backbone (AS24940) and packs hosts relatively conservatively; Contabo reaches its price by putting more VMs on each node. Community benchmarks and years of user reports consistently show slower, more variable disk and more noisy-neighbor contention on Contabo, which matters for database-backed sites. Hetzner also provisions instantly versus Contabo's 1 to 24 hours.

Is Contabo a good Hetzner alternative?

Only for specific workloads. If you need lots of RAM and cores at the lowest price and the work is not latency-sensitive (compile jobs, transcoding, scraping, batch processing, lab servers), Contabo is a reasonable Hetzner alternative. For production websites, ecommerce, or APIs, Hetzner is the safer alternative because disk speed, latency, and uptime are more consistent.

How long does Contabo take to provision a server?

Contabo provisioning ranges from 1 to 24 hours, especially for first-time accounts that go through manual review. Hetzner provisions a Cloud server in under 60 seconds via console or API. If you spin servers up and down often, or need infrastructure-as-code automation, Hetzner's instant provisioning is a real operational advantage.

Does Contabo or Hetzner have better support?

Hetzner support is faster and more consistent in our experience, usually resolving tickets within hours during EU business hours. Contabo support has historically been slower, with multi-day replies during busy periods and limited live chat. Neither is managed hosting, both are unmanaged providers where you run the operating system yourself.

Can I run WordPress on Contabo?

You can, but Hetzner is the better WordPress host of the two. WordPress is database-heavy, and Contabo's slower, more variable disk shows up as higher TTFB and slower admin under load. On a Hetzner CX23 with Redis or LiteSpeed caching you can comfortably serve a small-to-mid WordPress site. Use Contabo for WordPress only on a staging or low-traffic internal site where latency does not matter.

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