COMPARISON · OFFICIAL-SOURCE RESEARCH
Hetzner or DigitalOcean?
Choose DigitalOcean when an available region such as London, Toronto or Sydney, or its broader cloud ecosystem, is central to your deployment. Shortlist Hetzner when an available regional plan meets your workload at a suitable complete cost. For US hosting, compare US prices; Hetzner’s European starting price is not the US offer.
We compare documented product attributes and purchase decisions. We have not benchmarked either provider. There is no measured speed winner or support-response ranking here.
Quick comparison
| Dimension | DigitalOcean | Hetzner Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Sample European entry / general plan | Basic Regular: 4 GiB, 2 shared vCPU, 80 GiB, $24 monthly | EU CX23: 4 GB, 2 shared vCPU, 40 GB, €5.49 / $6.49 monthly |
| US price context | Check exact plan and region availability | US CPX11 price: €17.49 / $20.49 monthly; a different plan |
| CPU options | Shared Basic and specialized dedicated families | Shared Cost-Optimized / Regular Performance; dedicated General Purpose |
| Location examples | US, London, Toronto, Sydney, Frankfurt | Germany, Finland, Ashburn, Hillsboro, Singapore |
| Backup pricing reference | Weekly 20%; daily 30%; usage-based options | 20% of server price, seven slots |
| Public IPv4 | Bundled plan reference includes public IPv4 | Separate paid primary resource |
| Administration | You operate OS and applications | You operate OS and applications |
All compute figures exclude taxes and additional services. These samples differ in storage, units, hardware and geography. They are not equivalent performance measurements. Confirm current stock, specification and order total.
Pricing: compare the entire deployment
Start with the region you need, then choose resources. Add the backup schedule, primary IP, extra storage, bandwidth overages, database, monitoring and operator time. Hetzner’s June 2026 pricing update supersedes older price examples. DigitalOcean has multiple pricing variants; this page references Basic Regular bundled plans.
Use the cost calculator with one currency at a time. A lower compute line can be outweighed by operational work or a required managed service.
CPU, RAM and storage
A shared vCPU count describes an allocation, not a guaranteed application throughput. Separate bursty development or small web workloads from sustained processing. Check architecture compatibility, memory needed by all components and persistent-data growth. Validate realistic concurrency before treating a plan as production-ready.
Locations and dependency paths
Both providers offer US and European choices; the documented location lists differ. For a UK, Canadian or Australian local-region requirement, DigitalOcean is the clearer shortlist candidate among these two, subject to plan availability. Keep the application and database close where possible. We have no latency measurements to quantify the difference.
Ease of use
Both have a management console and infrastructure automation. Ease depends on your team’s existing tools and deployment process. Rehearse server creation, updates, access removal and recovery before committing a business application. A one-click application image does not remove ongoing administration.
Backups
Choose recovery objectives before a backup product. Ask what data is covered, how consistent the database copy will be, how long restoration takes and whether a separate copy is needed. Price percentages alone do not establish equivalent coverage. We have not tested restoration on either service.
Support
Check the provider’s current product support scope, contact channels and any paid support terms. Do not assume help maintaining WordPress, n8n or custom code. We have no ticket-response dataset and therefore assign no support score.
Choose DigitalOcean if…
- You require an available region in its documented location list.
- Your team values its tooling and adjacent cloud services.
- You accept the full cost and have an application operator.
Choose Hetzner if…
- A suitable available regional plan fits your application.
- You compare the correct regional quote and paid extras.
- You can operate the host, application and recovery process.
Best use cases
For self-hosted automation, use our n8n shortlist. For stores and business sites, first assign management and recovery responsibilities with our VPS buying checklist. If no one can operate the infrastructure, compare managed hosting before choosing either.
FAQ
Which is faster?
We do not have benchmark evidence. Test the relevant plan, region and workload rather than extrapolating from CPU counts.
Which is cheaper in the United States?
Compare current US plans with similar usable resources and full costs. The European CX23 price cannot answer that question.
Are there special offers here?
No exclusive offer is promised. The buttons currently go directly to official provider pages.
Sources
Checked October 1, 2026 (UTC): DigitalOcean pricing; features; availability; backups; support; Hetzner prices; CX23 specifications; server overview; locations; billing. Related: DigitalOcean overview and Hetzner overview.