awsAWSvsHN

AWS vs Hetzner Cloud

AWS and Hetzner are rarely compared directly because they target different ends of the market — but for European workloads, the cost difference is striking. Hetzner's CX32 (4 vCPU/8GB RAM, NVMe) costs €5.92/month; the equivalent AWS t3.xlarge costs ~$133/month. This comparison examines when AWS's premium is justified and when Hetzner delivers equal value at a fraction of the cost.

Overall Score

aws

Amazon Web Services

Tied

Wins 5/10 categories

Hetzner Cloud

Tied

Wins 5/10 categories

Our Verdict

Hetzner wins on price (5–10x cheaper), NVMe performance, and EU hosting. AWS wins on service breadth, global reach, serverless, managed databases, and enterprise compliance. For EU compute-only workloads: Hetzner. For complex multi-service architectures: AWS.

Pros & Cons

AWS

Amazon Web Services

Wins at

Service Breadth
Serverless
Managed Databases
Global Regions

Loses at

4 vCPU / 8GB Cost
Storage Type
Monthly Bandwidth
HN

Hetzner Cloud

Wins at

4 vCPU / 8GB Cost
Storage Type
Monthly Bandwidth
EU Compliance (GDPR)

Loses at

Service Breadth
Serverless
Managed Databases

Full Feature Comparison

Feature
AWS
HN
Winner
4 vCPU / 8GB Cost
~$133/mo (t3.xlarge)
€5.92/mo (CX32)
HN
Storage Type
EBS gp3 (extra cost)
NVMe SSD (included)
HN
Monthly Bandwidth
100GB free, $0.09/GB after
20TB included
HN
Service Breadth
200+ managed services
Compute + storage only
AWS
Serverless
Lambda, Fargate, AppRunner
Not available
AWS
Managed Databases
RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB
Self-managed only
AWS
EU Compliance (GDPR)
EU regions available
Fully EU-based
HN
Global Regions
33 regions worldwide
EU + 1 US location
AWS
Dedicated Servers
Bare Metal (expensive)
Robot Dedicated (cheap)
HN
Free Tier
Yes (12 months)
No
AWS

Which Should You Choose?

Choose AWS if…

Choose AWS when: you need specific managed services (RDS, Lambda, SageMaker), your users are globally distributed, you require enterprise compliance (HIPAA, FedRAMP), or your team is already AWS-experienced.

Buy AWS accounts

Choose HN if…

Choose Hetzner when: your primary users are in Europe, you need raw compute at minimal cost, you're running straightforward VPS workloads (web servers, databases), or you want dedicated servers at 10x less than AWS.

Buy HN accounts

Buy AWS or HN Now

AWS

Amazon Web Services

awsAmazon Web ServicesStarter
Free Trial

Full platform access

Free Trial Account

$15/account
2-8 Hours 7 Days Replacement
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awsAmazon Web Services
8vCPU

Dedicated compute

8 vCPU Account

$35/account
2-8 Hours 24/7 Support
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awsAmazon Web ServicesPopular
32vCPU

Dedicated compute

32 vCPU Account

$80/account
2-8 Hours 7 Days Replacement
View
HN

Hetzner Cloud

Alibaba Cloud
Alibaba Personal

Personal Account

$50/account
30min–12hrs 7 Days Replacement
View
Alibaba Cloud
Alibaba Business

Business Account

$90/account
30min–12hrs 24/7 Support
View
IBM Cloud
Free Trial

Full platform access

Free Trial Account

$30/account
30min–12hrs 7 Days Replacement
View

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