Last year my side project was running on AWS. A t3.small EC2 instance, an RDS PostgreSQL db.t3.micro, an S3 bucket, and a CloudFront distribution. Total bill: $47/month for an app with 200 daily users.
Then someone on Reddit told me to look at Hetzner. I now run the same stack on a single CAX21 (4 vCPU ARM, 8GB RAM, 80GB SSD) for €5.49/month.
Here's exactly what happened.
The Migration
What I was running on AWS:
Node.js API (Express)
PostgreSQL database
Redis for sessions
Nginx reverse proxy
Static files on S3 + CloudFront
What I moved to Hetzner:
Same Node.js API
PostgreSQL installed directly on the server
Redis installed directly on the server
Nginx + Certbot for SSL
Static files served by Nginx
Total migration time: one Saturday afternoon. The hardest part was setting up automated backups (solved with a cron job + Hetzner's snapshot API).
What Broke
Nothing critical, but:
No managed database failover. On RDS, if the database crashes, AWS restarts it automatically. On Hetzner, if PostgreSQL crashes at 3 AM, I'm the one fixing it. In 8 months, this has happened zero times. But it could.
No CDN by default. My static assets now serve from a single Hetzner datacenter in Germany. For my EU-heavy userbase, this is actually faster than CloudFront. For US users, it's about 50ms slower. I added Cloudflare (free tier) in front and the problem disappeared.
Deployment changed. No more eb deploy or push-to-deploy. I wrote a 12-line bash script that SSHs in, pulls from git, runs migrations, and restarts PM2. Takes 8 seconds. Honestly prefer it — I know exactly what's happening.
The Cost Comparison at Every Scale
This is what surprised me most. The gap isn't just at my small scale — it gets wider as you grow:
SpecAWSDigitalOceanVultrHetzner2 vCPU, 4GB$30/mo$24/mo$24/mo€4.50/mo4 vCPU, 8GB$61/mo$48/mo$48/mo€8.50/mo8 vCPU, 16GB$122/mo$96/mo$96/mo€16/mo
Hetzner is roughly 5-7x cheaper than AWS at every tier. DigitalOcean and Vultr sit in the middle.
👉 Calculate your exact costs
When NOT to Use Hetzner
I want to be fair. Hetzner is not the right choice for everyone:
Stay on AWS/GCP if:
You need 20+ managed services talking to each other (Lambda, SQS, DynamoDB, Step Functions). The ecosystem lock-in is real but so is the productivity.
Your company requires SOC2/HIPAA compliance with vendor support. Hetzner doesn't offer compliance certifications.
You need presence in Asia-Pacific or South America. Hetzner only has EU and US-East datacenters.
Your traffic is extremely spiky (0 to 100K requests in seconds). Auto-scaling on Hetzner means you built it yourself.
Use Hetzner if:
Your workload is predictable
You're comfortable with basic Linux administration
You're a solo founder or small team where $40/month saved = $480/year
You want raw performance per dollar (Hetzner's ARM boxes are incredibly fast)
The "But What About Reliability" Question
In 8 months on Hetzner: zero unplanned downtime. Their status page history is cleaner than most hyperscalers. The Nuremberg and Helsinki datacenters are enterprise-grade.
That said, I added simple safeguards:
Daily automated snapshots (€0.01/GB/month)
Health check with UptimeRobot (free)
Database backup to Backblaze B2 ($0.005/GB)
Total backup cost: ~$1.50/month. Peace of mind: priceless (or at least very cheap).
My Annual Savings
Before (AWS)After (Hetzner)Compute$30/mo€5.49/moDatabase$15/mo$0 (self-hosted)Storage/CDN$2/mo$0 (Cloudflare free)Total$47/mo ($564/yr)~$8/mo ($96/yr)
Annual savings: $468. For a side project, that's meaningful. Multiply it across 3-4 projects and you're saving $1,500-2,000 a year.
What's your hosting setup and monthly bill? I'm curious how other developers balance cost vs convenience. Built a comparison tool if you want to run your own numbers: Cloud VPS Cost Calculator
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