Hetzner vs Contabo vs OVH: Bare-Metal & VPS Pricing Playbook

Three vendors, one bill: how to read this comparison

Hetzner, Contabo, and OVHcloud sell the same raw material — vCPUs, RAM, NVMe storage, and a network port — at very different prices. Every price below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, fetched November 8, 2026. Hetzner and Contabo list euros; OVHcloud lists dollars, converted at the ECB rate of €1 = $1.1165 (November 6, 2026). Hetzner prices exclude VAT, Contabo include VAT, OVHcloud exclude tax. Contabo lists first-term prices.

The decision table

Hetzner Cloud: three lines, one missing

Cost-Optimized (CX, CAX) is cheapest: CX23, 2 vCPUs / 4 GB / 40 GB NVMe, €5.99 excluding VAT. CPX is shared AMD: CPX22, 2 vCPUs / 4 GB / 80 GB NVMe, €19.99. CCX is dedicated vCPU, from €43.49. On November 8, 2026, the whole Cost-Optimized line was marked "Currently not available".

Hetzner Regular Performance (CPX, shared AMD vCPU)

Hetzner General Purpose (CCX, dedicated AMD vCPU)

The screenshot above is Hetzner's own Regular Performance page. EU cloud servers include at least 20 TB, each extra TB €1.00; Asia-Pacific servers include 0.5 TB, each extra TB €7.40. IPv4 is billed separately at €0.50 a month, so Hetzner totals here add €0.50.

Contabo: the cheapest sticker, with a renewal step

Contabo's Cloud VPS line is the cheapest: its 4 vCPU / 8 GB plan costs €4.40 a month for the first 24 months. The page price is the monthly rate for a 24-month subscription, including VAT, renewing at the struck-through price — 20 percent off on every plan.

Contabo Cloud VPS (first 24 months / renewal)

Every Cloud VPS plan includes IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, DDoS protection, a firewall, and unlimited traffic under a fair-use policy, throttling reserved for exceptionally high usage. Snapshots included: 1 on VPS 4, 2 on VPS 6, 3 on larger plans. Storage is split: smaller plans ship SSD, NVMe only as the smaller half.

Contabo dedicated servers (first 12 months / renewal)

But stock is a real constraint: on November 8, 2026, three of the four dedicated servers — Ryzen 12, Genoa 24, Turin 64 — were Out of Stock; only the Turin 32 at €359.10 a month could be ordered. The Ryzen card conflicts with itself: its structured data describes 128 GB DDR5 RAM, while the visible card lists 64 GB expandable to 128 GB.

OVHcloud: the dollar-priced middle

OVHcloud's VPS 2027 range is the simplest of the three: four plans, NVMe throughout, daily backup and anti-DDoS included, unlimited traffic. Prices are "from" prices in US dollars, excluding tax, varying by datacentre; the figures below are the lowest shown.

OVHcloud VPS 2027

The screenshot above is OVHcloud's own VPS page. The RAM ceiling: VPS-4 tops out at 24 GB, so OVHcloud has no cloud VPS reaching 32 GB — a workload needing 32 GB must step up to a dedicated Rise server. Add-ons: snapshots from $0.40 a month (€0.36), premium backup from $1.40 a month (€1.25).

OVHcloud dedicated: Rise and Advance

Rise servers carry 1 Gbps public and private bandwidth with unlimited, free traffic in Europe, the United States, and Canada; in Asia-Pacific the default bandwidth carries a 25 TB monthly limit. Advance servers carry 3 Gbps unmetered public bandwidth and 25 Gbps private.

Bandwidth: where the bill actually grows

Hetzner includes at least 20 TB per cloud server in the EU, €1.00 per extra TB — 25 TB costs €5.00 in overage, 40 TB costs €20.00. Contabo includes unlimited traffic on every plan under a fair-use policy. OVHcloud includes unlimited traffic in Europe, the United States, and Canada, with a 25 TB monthly limit only in Asia-Pacific.

Profile 1: small blog, about 1 vCPU and 2 GB RAM

The small blog needs 1 vCPU, 2 GB of RAM, 40 GB of storage. Hetzner's match is the CPX12 at €11.99 plus €0.50 for IPv4; Contabo has no 1–2 vCPU plan, so its smallest Cloud VPS 4 (4 vCPUs, 8 GB) is €4.40 a month; OVHcloud's VPS-1 is $4.54 a month, 2 vCores and 4 GB, or €4.07.

OVHcloud wins on price at €4.07 a month; Contabo is 33 euro-cents behind at €4.40. Hetzner costs about three times either rival — its only orderable 1 vCPU plan is the CPX12, since the €5.99 CX23 is out of stock. Winner: OVHcloud VPS-1 on price, Contabo Cloud VPS 4 on headroom.

Profile 2: mid-size SaaS, about 4 vCPU and 8 GB RAM

The mid-size SaaS box needs 4 vCPUs, 8 GB of RAM, at least 100 GB of fast storage. Hetzner's CPX32 is €35.99 plus €0.50 for IPv4; Contabo's Cloud VPS 4 is €4.40 in the first 24 months; OVHcloud's VPS-2 is $8.50 (€7.61).

Contabo wins by a distance: €52.80 a year against €91.36 at OVHcloud and €437.88 at Hetzner — more than eight times the Contabo figure for the same 4 vCPUs and 8 GB of RAM. After the renewal step to €5.50 a month, the annual cost is €66.00. Winner: Contabo Cloud VPS 4.

Profile 3: heavy workload, about 8 vCPU and 32 GB RAM, or entry dedicated

32 GB of RAM is the line that splits cloud from dedicated. Hetzner cloud: CCX33, 8 dedicated vCPUs, 32 GB RAM, €138.99 plus €0.50 for IPv4. Hetzner dedicated: AX41, Ryzen 5 3600 (6c/12t), 64 GB RAM, €59.00, no setup fee. Contabo cloud: Cloud VPS 12, 12 vCPUs, 48 GB RAM, €20.00 in the first 24 months. Contabo dedicated: Turin 32, €359.10. OVHcloud cloud stops short: VPS-4 gives 8 vCores but only 24 GB for $23.37 (€20.93), so 32 GB forces the dedicated Rise-1 at $64.00 (€57.32) plus $64.00 installation.

Contabo wins the heavy profile outright for cloud: €240.00 a year for a 12 vCPU / 48 GB box that clears the spec. If dedicated isolation is the requirement, Hetzner's AX41 wins the first year at €708.00 against OVHcloud's Rise-1 at €745.19, because Hetzner charges no setup fee. After year one the Rise-1 is cheaper by €1.68 a month, repaying its $64.00 installation fee in about 34 months. Winner, heavy workload: Contabo Cloud VPS 12 for cloud, Hetzner AX41 for entry dedicated. Our LLM and vector database cost guide prices the same Hetzner hardware for a different workload; the Vercel versus Dokku versus Hetzner comparison covers the architecture question this price guide leaves out.

Where dedicated beats cloud VPS

The break-even point is the number of cloud servers whose combined monthly price equals one dedicated server. Below it, cloud wins; above it, dedicated wins.

Hetzner is the outlier: one 8 vCPU cloud server (CPX42 at €69.99 plus €0.50 IPv4) already costs more than the AX41 at €59.00, so dedicated wins at once. Contabo is the opposite extreme: the Turin 32 costs as much as 18 Cloud VPS 12s, so dedicated only pays when one box must hold more than 96 GB of RAM or more than 18 vCPUs. OVHcloud sits between: the Rise-1 costs as much as 2.74 VPS-4s, so dedicated wins from the third VPS-4 or above 24 GB of RAM.

Setup fees, contracts, and regions

Hetzner: no setup fee on cloud or the AX41, €49.00 on the AX42, €129.00 on the AX102. Contabo: no setup fees on dedicated; on Cloud VPS, a one-time fee on new Cloud VPS 4 instances on monthly contracts, amount unstated. OVHcloud: no setup fee on VPS; one month's price as installation on dedicated — $64.00 on the Rise-1, $136.00 on the Advance-1. Hetzner states no minimum term on dedicated servers, Contabo's minimum initial contract is 1 month, OVHcloud's VPS catalogue lists no commitment. Hetzner's CPX22 is €19.99 in the EU but €26.99 in Singapore; the CPX32 is €35.99 in the EU but €49.49 in Singapore; OVHcloud's Rise-1 lists at $64, $64, $67, and $89 by location.

Execution checklist: buy the right box in one pass

Buy in five steps: Step 1 spec the box; Step 2 check stock; Step 3 price the renewal; Step 4 add the small lines; Step 5 run the break-even.

• [x] Spec first: vCPUs, RAM, storage type, traffic — match the cheapest plan that meets all four.
• [x] Check stock: Hetzner's Cost-Optimized line and three of Contabo's four dedicated servers were unavailable on November 8, 2026.
• [x] Read the renewal line: Contabo Cloud VPS renews 25 percent higher after 24 months; dedicated about 11 percent higher after 12 months, except Ryzen.
• [x] Add the small lines: €0.50 a month for IPv4 at Hetzner, one month's price as installation on OVHcloud dedicated, VAT on Hetzner prices if you cannot reclaim it.
• [x] Price the traffic: under 20 TB all three cost the same; above it, Hetzner charges €1.00 per extra TB in the EU.
• [x] Run the break-even count — 1 at Hetzner, 3 at OVHcloud, 18 at Contabo — before the next VPS.
• [x] Re-check the price on the vendor's page on the day you order.

Hetzner, Contabo, and OVHcloud are not three prices for the same product: Hetzner sells a dedicated box that undercuts its own cloud at 8 vCPUs; Contabo sells the cheapest vCPU and RAM with a first-term discount; OVHcloud sells the simplest catalogue in dollars, with the lowest small-blog price and the hardest RAM ceiling. The risk is not the monthly price but the renewal step and the stock position.