Hetzner vs AWS: Which Should a Small App Use?
Hetzner offers simple, low-cost servers in Europe and a few other regions; AWS offers hundreds of managed services worldwide at a much higher price for raw compute. How they compare on cost, bandwidth, services, regions, support and complexity — and why many small apps start on one and never need the other.
Hetzner and AWS both rent you servers, but they're very different businesses.
- Hetzner is a German hosting company known for cheap, fast servers: cloud VMs, dedicated machines and storage, with a short, simple product list.
- AWS (Amazon Web Services) is the world's largest cloud, with hundreds of managed services — databases, queues, AI, analytics — in regions all over the world.
Prices change, and Hetzner raised prices several times in 2026. Check hetzner.com and the AWS pricing calculator for current numbers.
Side by side
| Hetzner | AWS | |
|---|---|---|
| Raw VM price | Low — often several times cheaper for similar CPU/RAM | Higher |
| Bandwidth | Generous traffic included with servers | Pay per GB for data leaving AWS |
| Managed services | A handful (load balancers, volumes, object storage, firewalls) | Hundreds (RDS, Lambda, SQS, S3, Bedrock…) |
| Regions | Germany, Finland, plus US and Singapore | Dozens worldwide |
| Pricing model | Simple monthly caps | Complex, many line items |
| Learning curve | Low | High |
| Support | Basic | Paid tiers |
Where Hetzner wins
- Price-to-performance. For a VM running your app and database, Hetzner is usually far cheaper, even after its 2026 increases.
- Simpler bills. Servers have monthly price caps and include a traffic allowance that varies by region. Traffic beyond that allowance is billed, so a sufficiently large spike can still add cost. (Hetzner Cloud pricing)
- Simplicity. The console has a few dozen options, not a few thousand.
- EU data residency is straightforward if your customers are in Europe. (GDPR Basics for App Builders)
Where AWS wins
- Managed services. Need a managed Postgres with automatic failover, a message queue, serverless functions, or a specific AI model? AWS has it, configured for you. (What Is Serverless?)
- Global reach. Regions close to users in Asia, South America, Africa and Australia.
- Enterprise requirements. Compliance certifications, private networking, detailed IAM permissions, and procurement teams that already trust AWS.
- Scaling up and out without changing providers.
The hidden costs
- AWS: data transfer out, NAT gateways, idle resources, and the time to understand the bill. Surprise bills are a rite of passage.
- Hetzner: you do more yourself. A Hetzner VM is a blank Linux machine; backups, database administration, HTTPS and monitoring are your job unless you put something on top. (Secure a New VPS)
Which should a small app use?
- One app, a database, mostly European users, cost-sensitive: Hetzner (or a managed platform built on similar servers).
- Needs specific managed services or global low latency: AWS.
- Not sure: start simple. Most apps don't need AWS's breadth on day one, and moving later is easier than untangling an over-built setup. (VPS vs PaaS)
The summary
- Hetzner: cheap, simple servers with generous bandwidth; you manage more.
- AWS: everything-included cloud, worldwide, at a higher and more complex price.
- Small apps rarely need AWS's breadth; they always need backups and HTTPS, wherever they live.
EasySpawn runs managed servers in the EU (Germany and Finland) with Postgres, HTTPS, daily backups and Claude Code included — server-level pricing without the blank-VM chores. See pricing or join the waitlist.
Related: Hetzner vs DigitalOcean · What Is a VPS? · How Much Does It Cost to Run an App? · Render vs Railway vs Fly
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