Hetzner vs Netcup for Self-Hosting (2026): The Price Gap Just Flipped

For years the default r/selfhosted advice was “just get a Hetzner CX instance.” That advice needs a second look: on 15 June 2026, Hetzner raised prices on its shared vCPU line — the CX22 went from €3.99 to €5.49/month, a 37.6% increase. Netcup, the other big German name in budget hosting, now offers more hardware for similar money. Here is how the two actually compare for self-hosting in July 2026.

Spec-for-Spec Comparison

Note the VAT asymmetry: Hetzner advertises net prices, Netcup includes 19% German VAT. Normalize both and the Netcup box costs roughly €4.97 net against Hetzner’s €5.49 — cheaper, with more than three times the disk.

What You Give Up With Netcup

Hetzner’s premium buys real conveniences:

• Automation. Hetzner’s cloud API and official Terraform provider are the reason it became the developer default. Spinning up a server, attaching a firewall, and adding it to a load balancer is a 20-line Terraform file. Netcup has an API, but the ecosystem around it is thin — if your homelab is infrastructure-as-code, this matters daily.
• Hourly experimentation. A Hetzner instance you delete after a weekend costs cents. Netcup offers hourly billing too, but its best prices come with commitment, and there’s no equivalent culture of ephemeral test boxes.
• Cloud firewall and snapshots are first-class, one-click features in Hetzner’s console.

What You Get With Netcup

• Storage. 128 GB vs 40 GB NVMe at the entry tier changes what you can self-host. Nextcloud with real files, an Immich photo library, or a Jellyfin box with a modest media collection all outgrow 40 GB fast — on Hetzner you’d add a volume at extra monthly cost.
• DDR5 RAM and modern hardware on the G12 generation, plus included DDoS protection and snapshots.
• More locations for a budget box. Netcup’s cheap plans deploy to Vienna, Amsterdam, and a US East Coast site (Manassas) — Hetzner’s equivalent CX line stays in Germany and Finland.

Which One for Which Workload?

• A single long-running box for Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Immich, or media: Netcup VPS 500 G12. Same compute, 3× the disk, and you’re not paying for API polish you won’t use.
• Terraform-managed homelab, CI runners, short-lived test servers: Hetzner’s automation tooling still leads between these two — see our Hetzner review — but at €5.49+ it’s worth comparing against DigitalOcean, whose API, Terraform provider, and documentation are at least as mature and include a large 1-click app marketplace.
• Maximum storage per euro: Contabo still wins on raw GB — see Hetzner vs Contabo — but Netcup sits in a sweet spot of storage plus consistently benchmarked performance.

FAQs

How much did Hetzner prices increase in June 2026?

Hetzner’s shared vCPU cloud plans went up on 15 June 2026 for new orders and rescales. The CX22 (2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe) rose from €3.99 to €5.49/month excluding VAT, a 37.6% increase, and the CX32 rose from €6.49 to €8.49/month. Existing running instances kept their configuration, but any resize or new deployment pays the new rate — worth knowing before you rebuild a server you provisioned at the old price.

Is Netcup actually cheaper than Hetzner once VAT is included?

Yes, for German customers comparing entry plans. Netcup’s advertised €5.91/month for the VPS 500 G12 already includes 19% German VAT, which works out to about €4.97 net. Hetzner’s €5.49 for the CX22 excludes VAT, so a German customer pays roughly €6.53 gross. That makes the Netcup box about €0.60/month cheaper gross while shipping 128 GB of NVMe storage instead of 40 GB.

Which provider is better for running Docker-based self-hosted apps?

Both run Docker Compose stacks without drama — 2 vCPU and 4 GB RAM handles a typical stack of Vaultwarden, Uptime Kuma, and Nginx Proxy Manager with room to spare. The deciding factor is disk: container images, volumes, and backups accumulate, and 40 GB fills up within months on an active homelab. Pick Netcup if the box will hold data (photos, files, media); pick Hetzner if you’ll manage it with Terraform or regularly destroy and recreate it.

Verdict

The June 2026 price increase ended Hetzner’s era of being both the cheapest and the best. In this head-to-head, Netcup’s VPS 500 G12 is now the stronger deal for the classic self-hosting pattern — one server, a Docker Compose file, and data you care about. If what drew you to Hetzner was the automation tooling, DigitalOcean delivers the same infrastructure-as-code workflow with better documentation and a bigger ecosystem. For the full field, see our complete VPS comparison.