netcup vs Hetzner in 2026: More Server for Your Euro, or the Better Cloud?
The one-sentence verdict: Pick netcup if you want the most RAM and storage per euro — its entry VPS gives you triple Hetzner’s storage for a lower price. Pick Hetzner if you want a real cloud platform around your server: free stateful firewalls, load balancers, object storage, one-click apps, and an API that Terraform speaks natively. Spec-for-spec netcup wins; ecosystem-for-ecosystem Hetzner wins.
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Why compare these two at all?
Hetzner is the default answer to “cheap European cloud.” netcup is the provider people mention in the replies. Both are German companies, both undercut every hyperscaler by an order of magnitude, and both keep showing up in the same shortlists — so a direct spec-for-spec comparison is overdue.
This is a narrower cut of our full roundup of cheaper Hetzner alternatives, where netcup came out as the best-value pick among four budget providers. If you landed here because of Hetzner’s price changes rather than a netcup itch, the companion post on Hetzner alternatives worth switching to covers the mainstream options (OVHcloud, Scaleway, Linode, DigitalOcean) instead.
All prices below were checked against both vendors’ live pages in July 2026.
netcup’s lineup: the G12 VPS line
netcup’s current x86 VPS generation is the G12 line. Every plan includes traffic, Copy-on-Write snapshots, DDoS protection, a remote console, and DDR5 ECC RAM — the kind of memory you normally see on dedicated hardware, not budget VPS plans.
| Plan | vCores | RAM | Storage | Price (incl. 19% VAT) | Hourly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPS 500 G12 | 2 | 4 GB DDR5 ECC | 128 GB NVMe | €5.91/mo | €0.010 |
| VPS 1000 G12 | 4 | 8 GB DDR5 ECC | 256 GB NVMe | €10.37/mo | €0.017 |
| VPS 2000 G12 | 8 | 16 GB DDR5 ECC | 512 GB NVMe | €19.25/mo | €0.031 |
| VPS 4000 G12 | 12 | 32 GB DDR5 ECC | 1 TB NVMe | €32.41/mo | €0.052 |
| VPS 8000 G12 | 16 | 64 GB DDR5 ECC | 2 TB NVMe | €47.95/mo | €0.076 |
Billing is hourly with no minimum contract term selectable, and servers can be expanded with additional local block storage. Five locations are available: Vienna, Nuremberg, Amsterdam, Manassas (USA), and Singapore — if you don’t specify one, your server lands in a European data center depending on capacity.
netcup also runs cheaper vServer Lite and ARM64 lines, plus Root Server and vGPU tiers above the VPS range, and displays TÜV-Nord ISO 9001, 27001, and 14001 certifications.
Hetzner’s lineup: the CX cost-optimized line
Hetzner’s comparable products are the Cost-Optimized (CX) shared-vCPU cloud servers. Hetzner bills hourly with a monthly price cap — you pay per hour until the “max.” monthly figure, then the meter stops.
| Plan | vCPUs | RAM | Storage | Price (net) | Hourly (net) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CX23 | 2 (Intel/AMD) | 4 GB | 40 GB SSD | €5.99/mo | €0.0096 |
| CX33 | 4 (Intel/AMD) | 8 GB | 80 GB SSD | €8.99/mo | €0.0144 |
| CX43 | 8 (Intel/AMD) | 16 GB | 160 GB SSD | €16.49/mo | €0.0264 |
| CX53 | 16 (Intel/AMD) | 32 GB | 320 GB SSD | €29.99/mo | €0.0481 |
Prices from Hetzner’s own price API, July 2026, before VAT — Hetzner’s site adds your local VAT rate at display time (the screenshot above shows 25.5% VAT as served to one EU region), while netcup’s public prices already include 19% German VAT. Keep that in mind when eyeballing the two tables; the net-to-net comparison below removes the distortion.
There’s also a parallel ARM line (CAX, from €6.49/mo net for the same 4 GB / 40 GB shape) — but the bigger catch is location: the CX cost-optimized line is only available in Hetzner’s eu-central region (Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki). If you need Hetzner’s US or Singapore regions, you’re shopping the pricier lines, whereas netcup’s standard VPS plans deploy to the US and Singapore directly.
Spec for spec: the entry plans decide it
The head-to-head that matters for most buyers is netcup’s VPS 500 G12 against Hetzner’s CX23, because they share the same 2-core / 4 GB shape:
| netcup VPS 500 G12 | Hetzner CX23 | |
|---|---|---|
| vCPU | 2 (x86) | 2 (Intel/AMD) |
| RAM | 4 GB DDR5 ECC | 4 GB |
| Storage | 128 GB NVMe | 40 GB SSD |
| Net price | ~€4.97/mo (€5.91 incl. 19% VAT) | €5.99/mo |
| Snapshots | Included (Copy-on-Write) | Backups are a paid add-on |
| Locations | 5 (incl. US, Singapore) | 3 (EU only for CX line) |
Same CPU count, same RAM amount — but netcup gives you newer ECC memory, more than three times the storage, snapshots included, and a lower net price. On raw hardware per euro, this is not close: netcup wins the entry tier outright. That’s the same conclusion our four-way budget comparison reached, and it holds all the way up the G12 range — netcup’s 16-core VPS 8000 G12 with 64 GB and 2 TB NVMe costs €47.95 including VAT, while Hetzner’s 16-core CX53 tops out at 32 GB / 320 GB for €29.99 before VAT.
Where Hetzner wins anyway
If the spec table were the whole story, nobody would use Hetzner. It isn’t, and these are the reasons:
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The cloud ecosystem. Free stateful firewalls you configure once and attach to any number of servers, load balancers, private networks, block storage, and S3-compatible object storage — all integrated in one console and one API. netcup gives you a VPS and local block storage; everything else you build and secure yourself at the OS level.
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Infrastructure-as-code. Hetzner’s API is a first-class Terraform provider with official SDKs. netcup has an API (its hero page lists “remote console, DVD drive, API”), but nothing near Hetzner’s tooling depth or community module coverage.
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One-click apps. Docker, WordPress, Nextcloud, GitLab, and a marketplace of prebuilt images deploy on Hetzner in minutes. netcup offers preconfigured vServer images, but not a comparable marketplace.
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Traffic posture. Hetzner leans hard on generous included traffic and cheap overage as a selling point against hyperscalers. netcup’s plans say “traffic included” without headline numbers — fine for typical workloads, but Hetzner is the one confident enough to make traffic a marketing weapon.
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Upgrade flexibility. Hetzner lets you rescale a cloud server between plan sizes. netcup only upgrades within the same product line and generation — moving from a G11 to a G12 plan means a migration, and your server’s location can’t be changed after setup.
For a deeper look at how Hetzner stacks up against a bare-metal-first budget rival instead, see our Cherry Servers vs Hetzner comparison.
Bottom line
Pick netcup if the job is “run this workload on the most machine my euros can buy.” A homelab-grade project, a game server, a self-hosted app stack, a database that wants RAM and disk — the VPS 500 G12’s 128 GB NVMe and ECC DDR5 at ~€4.97 net embarrass the CX23’s 40 GB at €5.99. Snapshots included and hourly billing with no minimum term make it low-risk to try.
Pick Hetzner if you’re building infrastructure rather than renting a box. The moment your architecture needs a firewall policy, a load balancer, object storage, Terraform state, or a second region on the same provider, Hetzner’s ecosystem pays back the spec gap — and its hourly billing with a monthly cap keeps costs predictable while you iterate.
The honest tiebreaker: for a single always-on server, netcup; for anything you’d describe with a diagram, Hetzner.
netcup vs Hetzner: FAQ
Is netcup cheaper than Hetzner?
Yes, at every comparable tier we checked in July 2026. The entry netcup VPS 500 G12 is ~€4.97/mo net (€5.91 incl. 19% VAT) for 2 vCores, 4 GB DDR5 ECC RAM, and 128 GB NVMe; Hetzner’s CX23 is €5.99/mo net for 2 vCPUs, 4 GB, and 40 GB. That’s more than triple the storage for about a euro less.
Is Hetzner better than netcup?
For platform features, yes. Hetzner includes free stateful cloud firewalls, load balancers, private networks, block and object storage, a one-click app marketplace, and first-class Terraform support. netcup’s answer is raw hardware value — DDR5 ECC RAM, NVMe storage, and included Copy-on-Write snapshots — with a much thinner ecosystem around it.
Can I get a US or Singapore server from either?
From netcup, yes on its standard VPS plans — it offers Vienna, Nuremberg, Amsterdam, Manassas (USA), and Singapore. Hetzner’s cost-optimized CX line is EU-only (Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki); its other regions require different plan lines.
Do netcup and Hetzner bill hourly?
Both do. netcup offers hourly billing with no minimum contract term selectable; Hetzner bills hourly with a monthly cap, so a server never costs more than the listed “max.” monthly price.
What’s the cheapest way to try either provider?
Hourly billing on both means you can spin a server up for pocket change and delete it. If you want to see how netcup and Hetzner compare against even cheaper indie hosts like Datalix, our cheaper Hetzner alternatives roundup covers the full budget field.
