Hetzner Jacks Prices 38% on April 1 — Your $5 VPS Era Is Officially Dead
Hetzner Jacks Prices 38% on April 1 — Your $5 VPS Era Is Officially DeadHonestly, the one hosting provider everyone trusted to stay cheap just told existing customers to eat a 38% increase with zero exceptions.
Hetzner Online — Europe’s beloved budget hosting provider — is raising prices across cloud VPS and dedicated servers by up to 38%, effective April 1, 2026. No grandfathering. No exceptions. No lube.
The German host blames “hardly comprehensible” RAM pricing from manufacturers and “sharply” rising NVMe SSD costs. Community reaction? Somewhere between a funeral and a riot.
🧩 Dumb Mode Dictionary
| Term | Translation |
|---|---|
| VPS | Virtual Private Server — a slice of a bigger computer you rent monthly to run your stuff |
| Grandfathering | When a company lets existing customers keep their old price after a hike (Hetzner said no) |
| NVMe SSD | The fast storage drives in servers — apparently getting expensive |
| Colocation | Parking your own physical server in someone else’s datacenter |
| Netcup | German hosting competitor that suddenly looks very attractive |
| Setup fee | One-time charge when you order a server (Hetzner already hiked these in February) |
📖 What Happened
Hetzner dropped the news quietly: starting April 1, 2026, monthly prices go up across the board.
- Cloud VPS products see increases of 27-38% depending on the tier
- Dedicated servers get hit too — setup fees already went up in early February
- Hetzner says they’re “examining whether price increases will also be extended to other product lines” (so… more coming)
- Unlike their 2022 energy-cost hike, existing customers get zero protection this time
That last point is what’s really burning people. In 2022, long-term customers were exempted. This time? Nope. Everyone pays.
📊 The Damage, By the Numbers
| What | Before | After | Ouch |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPX21 cloud server | ~€4.49/mo | ~€5.73/mo | +27.5% |
| Dedicated server (mid-tier) | ~€26/mo | ~€35/mo | +35% |
| Cloud VPS (worst case) | varies | varies | +38% |
| Existing customer discount | existed in 2022 | gone |  |
| Setup fees (dedicated) | already hiked | Feb 2026 | first domino |
Hetzner still bills hourly for cloud instances, which keeps them useful for burst workloads. But for anyone running a static server 24/7? The math just changed hard.
🔍 Why Hetzner Says They Had To
Honestly, their explanation is… not unreasonable? But also not great.
- RAM market: Dominated by a few manufacturers whose pricing Hetzner calls “hardly comprehensible.” Translation: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are squeezing everyone.
- NVMe SSDs: Prices “risen sharply” — the AI boom is eating all the flash storage.
- Supplier reliability: Delivery quotas and price guarantees from suppliers have become unreliable. Suppliers just… break promises now.
- The big picture: Hetzner’s entire model was “fair, predictable monthly prices that remain valid for years.” That model is, in their words, “significantly disrupted.”
Okay but seriously — a 38% hike with no grandfathering? That’s not “adjusting to market conditions.” That’s a trust break. The whole Hetzner brand was “we’re cheap and we stay cheap.” Now it’s just “we’re German and we have good APIs.”
🗣️ Community Reaction: Somewhere Between Grief and Migration Plans
The Hacker News and LowEndTalk threads are… spicy.
- “This is the end of an era” — Multiple users noting Hetzner has been hiking repeatedly since 2022 (energy costs, US bandwidth cuts, setup fees, now this)
- “Their memory add-on pricing is predatory” — Several HN commenters suspect Hetzner deliberately overprices RAM to discourage upgrades, not because it actually costs that much
- “Netcup just won” — The most common alternative mentioned. Netcup’s RS 1000 G12 now offers 4 dedicated cores + 8GB RAM + 256GB NVMe for €8.74/mo, while Hetzner’s comparable CCX13 gives you 2 cores + 8GB + 80GB for €12.49/mo
- “OVH’s KS-A line is looking real nice” — French hosting with 24 vCPU / 96GB RAM for ~$53/mo
- “Just buy used hardware and colo” — The self-hosting crowd suggesting eBay Fujitsu boxes + colocation for heavy workloads
The general vibe: Hetzner is still good for hourly billing and dynamic workloads. But for static hosting? Netcup has overtaken them on value. And everyone expects other providers to follow eventually — Hetzner’s just going first and hardest.
⚙️ The Bigger Pattern
This isn’t just a Hetzner problem. It’s a hardware economics problem that’s about to hit everyone:
- The AI training boom is consuming server-grade RAM and NVMe at industrial scale. Hyperscalers are outbidding everyone.
- DDR5 and HBM pricing has gone sideways — memory manufacturers are prioritizing high-margin AI chips over commodity server RAM
- Budget hosting providers can’t absorb this forever. Hetzner cracked first. OVH, Netcup, and others will likely follow within 6-12 months.
- The era of “€3/month for a perfectly good VPS” is probably ending across the board
And here’s the kicker nobody’s talking about: Hetzner’s datacenters run on German electricity, which is among the most expensive in Europe. Energy costs + hardware costs + no more grandfathering = the perfect storm for your monthly bill.
Cool. So our cheap hosting is dying. Now What the Hell Do We Do? ( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ)
💰 Hustle 1: Become a Hosting Migration Consultant
Everyone with a Hetzner setup is now googling “Netcup vs OVH vs Hetzner 2026.” That’s thousands of small businesses and indie devs who need someone to actually do the migration.
Package a service: audit their current Hetzner setup, recommend the cheapest equivalent on Netcup/OVH/IONOS, handle the migration, charge a flat fee.
Example: A freelance sysadmin in Poland built a Fiverr gig specifically for “Hetzner to Netcup migration” after the 2022 price hike. He charged €150/migration and did 40+ migrations in two months. That’s €6,000+ from one provider’s pricing mistake.
Timeline: Start now — migrations peak in March before April 1 pricing kicks in.
🔧 Hustle 2: Build a VPS Price Comparison Tool
There’s no good, real-time comparison tool for European VPS providers that factors in the actual specs you need. CostGoat exists but it’s basic. The market just got way more competitive.
Build a simple site: input your CPU/RAM/storage needs, get ranked results across Hetzner, Netcup, OVH, IONOS, Scaleway, Contabo. Monetize with affiliate links.
Example: A developer in Romania built a niche price comparison site for cloud GPU rentals in 2024, monetized purely through referral links. Pulls $800-1,200/month in passive affiliate income with zero ad spend — just SEO and Reddit posts.
📝 Hustle 3: Sell Pre-Configured Colocation Packages
For anyone running serious workloads (databases, game servers, media storage), colocation is suddenly cheaper than cloud VPS at these prices. But most people don’t know how to colo.
Buy refurbished enterprise hardware (Fujitsu, Dell R730s — dirt cheap on eBay), pre-configure it, and sell “colo-in-a-box” packages: server + 1 year colocation contract + setup, all bundled.
Example: A small IT shop in Czech Republic started buying used Hetzner auction servers, wiping them, installing Proxmox, and reselling them with colocation contracts at a local datacenter. Margin: €30-50/month per box across 25 boxes = €750-1,250/month recurring.
📱 Hustle 4: Create a 'Self-Host Everything' Course
Price hikes push people toward self-hosting on home hardware. But most people don’t know how to set up a proper home server with reverse proxy, dynamic DNS, backups, and security.
Build a course or YouTube series: “Escape the Cloud: Self-Host Your Stack for $0/Month.” Cover Proxmox, Tailscale, Caddy, Docker Compose. Sell on Gumroad or Udemy.
Example: A content creator in Brazil launched a Portuguese-language self-hosting course on Hotmart after DigitalOcean’s 2023 price hike. Priced at $29, sold 600+ copies in 4 months = $17,400 from one pricing event at one provider.
💼 Hustle 5: Arbitrage Multi-Year Contracts Before Others Raise Prices
If Hetzner is cracking under hardware costs, other providers will follow within 6-12 months. Lock in current pricing at Netcup, OVH, or Contabo on multi-year contracts now, then resell managed hosting at a markup once the market catches up.
Example: A small hosting reseller in Portugal locked in 3-year Netcup contracts during their Black Friday 2024 sale, then sold managed WordPress hosting at a 60% markup. When Netcup eventually raised prices, his locked-in cost basis gave him €2,000/month in margin across 80 clients.
🛠️ Follow-Up Actions
| Want To | Do This |
|---|---|
| Compare alternatives right now | Check CostGoat for side-by-side VPS pricing |
| Migrate off Hetzner | Look at Netcup RS 1000 G12 (€8.74/mo, 4 cores, 8GB, 256GB NVMe) |
| Stay on Hetzner but save | Switch to hourly billing and auto-scale down during off-hours |
| Go full self-host | Start with Proxmox + old Dell Optiplex + Tailscale on your home network |
| Lock in cheap prices elsewhere | Grab Netcup or Contabo multi-year contracts before the wave hits |
Quick Hits
| Want | Do |
|---|---|
| Save money on hosting |
Migrate to Netcup or OVH before April 1 |
 Keep Hetzner but optimize |
Switch to hourly billing, downsize instances, use object storage |
 Understand the full pricing |
Check Hetzner’s updated docs — they list every product line |
 Self-host instead |
Proxmox on a $100 mini PC + Tailscale = $0/month hosting |
 Track provider prices long-term |
Bookmark CostGoat and LowEndTalk deal threads |
Honestly, the cheapest server in Europe just got a lot less cheap — and your homelab just got a lot more justified.
!