Contabo vs Hetzner (2026): Prices, Terms and the Month-24 Cost

How this was checked

Contabo's site blocks automated fetchers, so I read contabo.com/en/vps/ and the Cloud VPS 4 and 8 order configurators in a real browser on October 15, 2026, from Pakistan. Prices appeared in euros, and the same page showed dollars (for example $5.28 against $6.60 for Cloud VPS 4) when the currency was switched. Contabo's footnote says the displayed price includes applicable taxes, and the page has an Including VAT or Excluding VAT toggle. I did not place an order, so I cannot tell you what VAT an EU buyer sees at checkout. Hetzner prices come from its price adjustment page and plan pages, excluding VAT, read through a US-based fetch.

I have not benchmarked Contabo. I run production sites on Hetzner (numbers on our performance page), but that data does not include a Contabo server, so this page has no speed or disk figures for either. Statements about how Contabo behaves come from Contabo's own wording. We earn nothing on Contabo or Hetzner. Hostinger, mentioned once below, does pay us; see the disclosure.

Check first: can you order a Hetzner server right now?

On October 15, 2026, Hetzner's public Cloud product pages showed a disabled Create button, "This product is currently unavailable", on every plan we opened in the CX, CPX and CCX lines. Hetzner's status page has carried an open notice since June 26, 2026, "Limited availability of cloud instances", which says Hetzner is restricting the creation of new cloud servers for new customers and for some existing customers, chosen at random. We did not try to place an order, so we can't say which sizes or locations your own account can create. Check the Hetzner Console before you plan around any Hetzner price on this page, and keep a second provider on your shortlist.

The full detail, including Hetzner's June 15, 2026 price rise, is on the Hetzner vs Azure page. Hetzner prices below are published list prices, not a promise of stock.

The plans side by side

Contabo renamed its range; the "VPS S" name used by older comparisons is gone. Current entry plans are Cloud VPS 4, 6 and 8, all under Contabo's "Core VPS" heading.

Contabo: contabo.com/en/vps/ and the Cloud VPS 4 configurator, viewed in a browser in Pakistan, EUR display, October 15, 2026. Hetzner: docs.hetzner.com price adjustment page (Germany and Finland, excluding VAT and IPv4), hetzner.com/cloud plan pages and the Primary IP docs, October 15, 2026. A 200 Mbit/s port can move at most about 65 TB a month at full line rate, my arithmetic, so the port is rarely the limit before the fair usage policy is.

Contabo's range continues upward: Cloud VPS 6 is 6 vCPU, 12 GB at €7.50 month to month and €6.00 on the 24-month term, and Cloud VPS 8 is 8 vCPU, 24 GB, 300 GB SSD or 150 GB NVMe at €14.00 and €11.20. From Cloud VPS 6 up you choose between SSD and a smaller NVMe disk.

Contract terms, term by term

The order page for Cloud VPS 4 lists three terms, each with "No Setup Fee":

Contabo order configurator, October 15, 2026. Paid-at-checkout totals are rate times months; the 24-month figure matches the "Prepaid 24 Months €105.60" line in Contabo's order summary.

Contabo's fine print on the VPS page reads: minimum initial contract length 1 month, minimum following contract length "equal to the initial contract length", cancellation notice "none (pre-paid) or 4 weeks (post-paid)". The plan cards say the rate holds "for the first 24 months". I did not find the rate after that on the pages I read, and the page does not promise a refund for unused prepaid months, so treat a prepay as non-refundable until Contabo's support tells you otherwise. Extras on Cloud VPS 4 at checkout: Auto Backup €1.65 a month, a United Kingdom location +€1.05, United States Central +€1.05, East +€1.55, West +€1.30, and Windows Server +€8.00 a month. The European Union location is free.

Hetzner's side is simpler: no term, hourly billing, and its plan pages state a server's bill never exceeds the monthly price. Deleting mid-month bills the hours used.

Month-12 and month-24 cost for equal sizes

Cumulative cash out, euros. Hetzner includes the €0.50 IPv4 address. Contabo includes the address in the plan. VAT is excluded from Hetzner and unclear on Contabo's page (see the method note), so read the ratios as indicative.

Sources: Contabo order configurators for Cloud VPS 4 and 8, Hetzner price adjustment page and Primary IP docs, all October 15, 2026. Cumulative figures are my multiplication. The Contabo 8 plan has 24 GB against Hetzner's 16 GB, 300 GB SSD against 160 or 320 GB NVMe.

Two readings. First, Contabo is cheaper at every term, and the month-to-month term is already 1.6x cheaper than the CX33 list price. Second, the prepay is a commitment, not a bargain on its own: with no refund promised for unused months, the 24-month prepay of €105.60 costs more than paying €5.50 monthly if you leave before about month 19, and the 12-month prepay breaks even around month 10.

The decision rule

1. Does a person wait on this server? A website, checkout, API or database that users hit. If yes, buy Hetzner CPX or CCX, or look at Contabo's Performance VPS line, which I did not price. Contabo's own page describes Core VPS as for "teams who value cost-efficiency over raw speed" and lists databases and API services under Performance VPS.
2. Is it batch, staging, backup, mail, a lab or a runner nobody waits on? Buy Contabo Core. Capacity per euro decides, and Contabo's cost-over-speed positioning does not cost you anything you needed.
3. Will it live for a few days or weeks? Hetzner, because it bills by the hour. Contabo's shortest commitment is one month.
4. Choose the Contabo term last. Start on the 1-month term, which has no setup fee, so a month of testing your real workload costs €5.50 on Cloud VPS 4. Move to 12 or 24 months only after it has run well, and only for a server you expect to keep past the break-even months above.
5. Need it today and can accept a higher bill? Check Hetzner's Console for whether any plan can be created for your account. If it is not, Contabo's VPS page says provisioning takes "a few minutes after payment clears".

What Contabo documents about its limits

These are Contabo's words, not my measurements. Outgoing traffic is "unlimited" under a fair usage policy, and Contabo "reserves the right to throttle servers with exceptionally high or disruptive usage patterns". Incoming traffic is unlimited and unmetered. Support is described as "full technical assistance for the Contabo VPS itself - including the network, hardware, and initial setup of any 1-click Add-Ons"; maintenance and troubleshooting of the software in the apps is the customer's job. Contabo advertises 99.9% uptime on the VPS page. Hetzner's cloud page advertises an SLA with 99.9% guaranteed uptime and credits. Both are vendor claims that I have not measured. Contabo lists 9 regions and 11 locations, Hetzner six sites (Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki, Ashburn, Hillsboro, Singapore). Both document an API and Terraform support; Contabo calls its API and CLI "Terraform-compatible", Hetzner lists Terraform, Ansible and Kubernetes integrations.

Older comparisons claim Contabo provisions in 1 to 24 hours, that its API is limited and that its support is slow. I could not source any of that from Contabo or from a reliable measurement, so it is not repeated here. If those matter to you, ask Contabo's sales team in writing before you prepay.

A third option: Hostinger KVM

If you want a US-listed price with a stated renewal rate, Hostinger's KVM VPS plans are the one other VPS option we link. On hostinger.com/vps-hosting (US, checked October 15, 2026): KVM 2 is 2 vCPU, 8 GB, 100 GB NVMe and 8 TB bandwidth at $8.99 a month, renewing at $14.99; KVM 4 is 4 vCPU, 16 GB, 200 GB NVMe and 16 TB at $12.99, renewing at $28.99. Hostinger says all plans are paid upfront and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. The card prices are promotional and the term is chosen at checkout, so read the checkout total. Hostinger pays us a commission if you buy through that link; Contabo and Hetzner do not.

Skip this comparison if

• You want to host a WordPress site without managing a server. Both companies sell unmanaged servers. Start at best WordPress hosting.
• You need a Windows server. Contabo sells Windows Server as a paid add-on (€8.00 a month on Cloud VPS 4); see Windows VPS.
• You are comparing against a hyperscaler. See Hetzner vs Azure, or Hetzner vs DigitalOcean for the mid-priced option.

Contabo vs Hetzner FAQ

Is Contabo cheaper than Hetzner?

Yes at equal vCPU and RAM. Checked October 15, 2026, Contabo's Cloud VPS 4 (4 vCPU, 8 GB) is €5.50 a month or €4.40 on a 24-month prepay, while Hetzner's CX33 is €8.49 but shown as unavailabble and the CPX32 is €35.49, both before the €0.50 IPv4 address and VAT.

Does Contabo charge a setup fee?

On the Cloud VPS 4 and Cloud VPS 8 order pages read on October 15, 2026, every term from one month to 24 months shows "No Setup Fee". Check the order summary at your own checkout.

What contract does Contabo require?

The minimum initial term is one month, the following term equals the initial term, and the cancellation notice is none for prepaid and four weeks for post-paid, per Contabo's VPS page. The 12 and 24-month rates require paying for the whole term up front.

How much traffic does each include?

Contabo lists unlimited outgoing traffic under a fair usage policy, with a 200 Mbit/s port on Cloud VPS 4, and reserves the right to throttle disruptive usage. Hetzner includes 20 TB per server in its European locations and less in the US and Singapore.

Can I order Hetzner's CX plans right now?

Hetzner's cost-optimized page showed the CX, CPX and CCX plans as unavailable on October 15, 2026, and a status notice on limited cloud capacity has been open since June 26, 2026. Check the Hetzner Console for your account and location before planning around a CX price.

Which is better for a website?

Contabo's own page describes its Core VPS as cost-efficiency over raw speed and lists databases and API services under its Performance VPS. For anything users wait on, a Hetzner CPX or CCX plan, or Contabo's Performance line, is the safer starting point. I have no Contabo benchmark, so this follows Contabo's own positioning.

What to read next

• VPS hosting guide, the full section.
• Hetzner vs DigitalOcean.
• Hetzner vs Azure, including Hetzner's June 2026 price changes.
• Our real hosting performance numbers.