Hetzner vs Vultr: Which Cloud Should You Build On?
Hetzner and Vultr are two well-known developer clouds outside the hyperscalers, and both bill by the hour with an API-first approach. Hetzner, a German company founded in 1997, focuses on value: a small set of locations, generous included traffic and prices that never change. Vultr, founded in the US in 2014, focuses on reach and choice: 32 locations on six continents, GPU instances, custom ISOs and Windows images. If you know where your users are and what your workload looks like, the choice is usually obvious. Prices below are live from our tracker.
At a glance
| Hetzner | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 1997, Germany | 2014, United States |
| Cheapest cloud server | CX23: $6.23/mo (2 vCPU · 4 GB RAM · 40 GB NVME · 20 TB traffic · 10 Gbps) | Cloud Compute 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB (IPv6-only): $2.50/mo (1 vCPU · 0.5 GB RAM · 10 GB SSD · 0.5 TB traffic) |
| Billing | Hourly with a monthly cap | Hourly or monthly |
| Locations | 6: Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki, Ashburn, Hillsboro, Singapore | 32 on six continents |
| Windows images | Not offered on the cloud | Available for a licence fee |
| GPU instances | Dedicated GPU servers only | Cloud GPUs from $43.00/mo |
| Support | Tickets; phone on weekdays, 8am–6pm CET | 24/7 tickets |
Price and included traffic
Hetzner's cheapest cloud server, CX23, costs $6.23 a month for 2 vCPU · 4 GB RAM · 40 GB NVME · 20 TB traffic · 10 Gbps. Vultr's cheapest, Cloud Compute 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB (IPv6-only), costs $2.50 for 1 vCPU · 0.5 GB RAM · 10 GB SSD · 0.5 TB traffic. At the same monthly spend Hetzner gives you more CPU, memory and disk, and its EU cloud plans include 20 TB of traffic, many times what Vultr's small plans include. Neither uses introductory pricing, and both bill by the hour. Hetzner's prices exclude the primary IPv4 address, which costs a little extra.
Where you can deploy
Vultr's footprint is its strongest card: 32 cloud locations spanning North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa, including Johannesburg, São Paulo, Santiago, Mexico City, Seoul and Osaka. Hetzner runs six locations: Falkenstein and Nuremberg in Germany, Helsinki in Finland, Ashburn and Hillsboro in the US, and Singapore. For users in Europe Hetzner is ideal; for a global audience or a specific country, Vultr is far more likely to have a nearby region.
Platform features
Both have mature APIs and official Terraform providers, private networks, firewalls and load balancers. Vultr adds custom ISO uploads, Windows images, one-click apps and a large menu of instance families, including high-frequency CPUs and cloud GPUs with fractional or full NVIDIA cards. Hetzner offers ARM servers on Ampere CPUs alongside Intel and AMD, a clean console, and storage boxes and dedicated servers in the same account.
GPUs
Vultr sells cloud GPUs by the hour, starting at $43.00 a month for a fraction of an NVIDIA card. Hetzner does not sell GPU cloud instances; it rents dedicated GPU servers on monthly terms from $263.43.
Support and uptime
Neither offers live chat to standard accounts: both work through tickets, and Hetzner also has a phone line on weekdays from 8am to 6pm CET. Our monitor checks each company's own website every few minutes; over the last 30 days it measured 99.78% for Hetzner and 99.75% for Vultr, which reflects their public sites rather than the servers you rent.
Which one should you pick?
- Choose Hetzner for the best specs and traffic per dollar in Europe, ARM servers and a simple, predictable cloud.
- Choose Vultr when you need a region close to users outside Europe, Windows servers, custom ISOs, or GPUs by the hour.
About HetznerHetzner is a German cloud and dedicated-server provider famous for the best price-to-performance in Europe. Where Contabo competes on raw resources, Hetzner competes on network quality, low latency and a polished API — ideal for developers running latency-sensitive workloads.
About VultrVultr is a privately held cloud infrastructure company founded in 2014 by David Aninowsky. The company provides cloud computing, GPU infrastructure, bare metal servers, storage, networking, Kubernetes, managed databases, and other infrastructure services for developers, startups, enterprises, and organizations running demanding workloads.
Headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida, Vultr has built its business around providing globally distributed cloud infrastructure with an emphasis on performance, flexible deployment, developer accessibility, and transparent infrastructure pricing. The company describes itself as an independent cloud infrastructure provider, positioning its platform as an alternative to the largest hyperscale cloud providers.
Company History
Vultr was founded in 2014 by David Aninowsky. For its first decade, the company operated as a largely self-funded business before raising institutional capital to accelerate its expansion in cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence.
In December 2024, Vultr announced a growth financing round that valued the company at approximately $3.5 billion. The investment was led by LuminArx Capital Management and AMD Ventures, with the capital intended to support further expansion of Vultr's global cloud and AI infrastructure.
The company has grown from a developer-focused cloud provider into a broader infrastructure platform serving organizations ranging from individual developers and startups to larger enterprises.
Global Cloud Infrastructure
Vultr operates a globally distributed cloud infrastructure platform spanning multiple continents. The company historically operated 32 cloud data center regions and expanded to its 33rd region in Milan, Italy, announced in 2026.
The infrastructure is designed to allow customers to deploy workloads geographically closer to their users while providing access to different combinations of CPU, GPU, storage, networking, and dedicated hardware.
Vultr's infrastructure portfolio includes:
- Cloud Compute
- VX1 Cloud Compute
- Optimized Cloud Compute
- Cloud GPU
- Bare Metal
- Kubernetes
- Managed Databases
- Block Storage
- Object Storage
- File Storage
- Load Balancers
- VPC networking
- Firewalls
- CDN
- DNS
- Container Registry
- Serverless computing and inference
- Backup and snapshot services
The platform also provides APIs and infrastructure automation capabilities for developers and engineering teams.
Cloud Compute
Cloud Compute remains one of Vultr's core infrastructure products. Customers can deploy virtual machines with different CPU, memory, storage, and networking configurations for applications ranging from websites and APIs to databases, SaaS applications and development environments.
Vultr also offers specialized compute configurations for workloads requiring additional CPU performance or predictable dedicated resources.
In 2026, the company introduced and expanded its VX1 Cloud Compute platform, targeting enterprise workloads such as web applications, SaaS platforms, ERP systems, microservices, databases, analytics, and AI-related workloads.
GPU and AI Infrastructure
Artificial intelligence has become an increasingly important part of Vultr's infrastructure strategy.
The company offers GPU-accelerated cloud infrastructure using hardware from NVIDIA and AMD, targeting AI training, inference, machine learning, graphics processing, data analytics, and other GPU-intensive workloads.
Vultr's GPU infrastructure is available across its global network, allowing organizations to deploy AI workloads without relying exclusively on the largest hyperscale cloud providers. The company's infrastructure portfolio includes modern NVIDIA and AMD GPU configurations designed for both traditional accelerated computing and emerging generative-AI workloads.
Vultr has also expanded into managed and serverless AI infrastructure, including Serverless Inference, which allows customers to deploy and scale AI inference workloads without directly managing the underlying infrastructure.
Bare Metal
Vultr provides dedicated bare metal servers for workloads that require direct access to physical hardware.
Unlike virtualized cloud instances, bare metal deployments provide customers with a dedicated physical server without a virtualization layer. This can be useful for workloads requiring predictable performance, dedicated resources, specialized software configurations, or intensive CPU and GPU processing.
Kubernetes and Cloud-Native Infrastructure
Vultr operates its own managed Kubernetes service, Vultr Kubernetes Engine (VKE).
VKE allows developers and infrastructure teams to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters without having to build and maintain the underlying control-plane infrastructure themselves. Vultr integrates Kubernetes with its compute, networking, storage, load balancing, and other cloud services.
The company also supports infrastructure automation through APIs and integrations with popular infrastructure-as-code and DevOps technologies.
Storage and Networking
Vultr's platform includes a broad range of storage and networking services designed to complement its compute infrastructure.
Storage products include:
- Block Storage
- Object Storage with S3-compatible APIs
- File System storage
- Backups
- Snapshots
- Managed databases
Networking capabilities include:
- Virtual Private Cloud networks
- Load Balancers
- Firewalls
- Reserved IP addresses
- BGP
- DNS
- CDN services
- Private connectivity options
These services allow customers to build complete application environments within the Vultr ecosystem rather than relying exclusively on third-party infrastructure.
Managed Databases
Vultr offers managed database infrastructure designed to reduce the operational work involved in deploying and maintaining database clusters.
The service supports both relational and non-relational database workloads and includes features such as automated backups, high availability, and managed infrastructure.
Enterprise and Compliance
As Vultr has expanded into enterprise and industry-specific workloads, the company has increased its focus on security, privacy, and regulatory requirements.
Vultr states that its infrastructure supports compliance requirements and frameworks relevant to industries and jurisdictions including SOC, ISO, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, LGPD, and other privacy and data-protection requirements. The exact requirements and availability of specific compliance configurations can vary by product, region, and customer deployment.
The company also offers enterprise-oriented networking and infrastructure capabilities such as private connectivity, BGP, dedicated infrastructure, SSO, and other tools intended for larger deployments.
Developer Focus
One of Vultr's defining characteristics is its developer-oriented approach.
The platform provides a relatively streamlined interface for deploying infrastructure while also exposing APIs, CLI tooling, infrastructure-as-code integrations, and technical documentation for users who prefer automation.
Vultr's documentation covers compute, GPU infrastructure, Kubernetes, storage, networking, APIs, CLI tools, Terraform integrations, and other developer workflows.
This approach allows Vultr to serve both users who want to deploy a server through a web interface and engineering teams building automated infrastructure environments.
Customers and Use Cases
Vultr serves a broad range of workloads and customer types, including:
- Developers and individual projects
- Startups and scale-ups
- SaaS companies
- Web applications
- E-commerce platforms
- Gaming infrastructure
- Media and entertainment
- Financial services
- Healthcare and life sciences
- Telecommunications
- AI and machine-learning applications
- Enterprise software
- Data-intensive applications
The company has positioned its infrastructure as suitable for both conventional cloud workloads and newer AI-driven applications.
Business Model
Vultr primarily operates as a cloud infrastructure provider, generating revenue from the consumption of its compute, storage, networking, GPU, bare metal, database, and related services.
Its platform supports flexible infrastructure deployment, allowing customers to scale resources according to their workloads. This consumption-oriented model is common across the infrastructure-as-a-service market and allows Vultr to compete across both developer and enterprise segments.
Vultr's Position in the Cloud Market
Vultr occupies a position between traditional hosting providers and the largest hyperscale cloud platforms.
Compared with conventional web hosting companies, Vultr provides substantially broader infrastructure capabilities, including cloud compute, dedicated bare metal, GPU infrastructure, Kubernetes, managed databases, private networking, and infrastructure APIs.
Compared with hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, Vultr focuses more narrowly on infrastructure services and emphasizes a simpler developer experience, global deployment options, and competitive price-to-performance.
The company's independence is an important part of its corporate positioning. Vultr has described itself as an independent cloud infrastructure company focused on providing an alternative to the major technology platforms.
Vultr Today
Vultr has evolved from a developer-focused cloud hosting company into a global infrastructure platform spanning traditional cloud computing, dedicated servers, GPU acceleration, AI infrastructure, Kubernetes, managed databases, storage, and networking.
Its expansion into AI and GPU infrastructure represents a major evolution of the business as demand for accelerated computing continues to reshape the cloud infrastructure market.
With more than 80 million cloud servers launched according to the company's current materials and a global network of cloud data center regions, Vultr is now positioned as a significant independent provider in the broader cloud infrastructure market.
Key Facts
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Company | Vultr |
| Founded | 2014 |
| Founder | David Aninowsky |
| Company type | Privately held cloud infrastructure company |
| Headquarters | West Palm Beach, Florida, USA |
| Core business | Cloud infrastructure and computing |
| Cloud regions | 33 global regions following the 2026 Milan expansion |
| Core products | Cloud Compute, GPU, Bare Metal, Kubernetes, Storage, Networking, Databases |
| AI infrastructure | NVIDIA and AMD GPU infrastructure, Serverless Inference |
| Enterprise services | Dedicated infrastructure, networking, security and compliance capabilities |
| Infrastructure model | Public cloud, dedicated infrastructure and managed services |
| Primary customers | Developers, startups, SMBs, enterprises and technology companies |
| 2024 financing valuation | Approximately $3.5 billion |
DohoHub profile: Vultr is a global independent cloud infrastructure provider focused on compute, GPU, bare metal, and developer-oriented cloud services. Its product portfolio has expanded significantly beyond traditional VPS hosting into AI infrastructure, managed services, Kubernetes, storage, networking, and enterprise cloud deployments.
Comparison Table
| Feature | Hetzner | Vultr |
|---|---|---|
| Price / mo | $1.81 win | $2.50 |
| Renewal price | Same as initial | Same as initial |
| Datacenters | 6 | 32 win |
| NVMe storage | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Free domain | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Backups | Paid | Paid |
| CDN | ✗ No | ✓ Yes win |
| Support | Tickets, weekday phone | 24/7 chat |
| Uptime · 30d | 99.78% win | 99.75% |
Price History
Hetzner · Webhosting SCollecting price history — the trend fills in as we track this plan.
Vultr · Cloud Compute 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB (IPv6-only)Collecting price history — the trend fills in as we track this plan.
Uptime & Performance
Hetzner 99.78% Vultr 99.75%Pros & Cons
Hetzner- More CPU, RAM and disk per dollar on small plans
- 20 TB of monthly traffic on EU cloud plans
- ARM servers on Ampere CPUs alongside x86
- Dedicated servers and storage boxes in the same account
- Six locations, with one in Asia-Pacific
- No Windows images on the cloud
- No cloud GPU instances
- Primary IPv4 costs extra
Vultr- 32 cloud locations on six continents
- Cloud GPUs by the hour from $43.00/mo
- Windows images and custom ISO uploads
- Many instance families, including high-frequency CPUs
- Less CPU, RAM and traffic per dollar than Hetzner
- Support by ticket only
- Backups and snapshots are paid add-ons
- The cheapest plan, Cloud Compute 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB (IPv6-only), is IPv6-only
The Verdict
Hetzner gives you more server for the money and far more included traffic, which makes it the default choice for European workloads and cost-sensitive projects. Vultr gives you the map: 32 locations, Windows and custom ISOs, and cloud GPUs you can switch on for an hour. Plenty of teams run their main stack on Hetzner and use Vultr for edge nodes in regions Hetzner does not cover.
Hetzner & Vultr alternatives
FAQ
For resources per dollar, yes. Hetzner's cheapest cloud server costs $6.23 a month for 2 vCPU · 4 GB RAM · 40 GB NVME · 20 TB traffic · 10 Gbps; Vultr's cheapest costs $2.50 for 1 vCPU · 0.5 GB RAM · 10 GB SSD · 0.5 TB traffic. Both bill by the hour and neither uses introductory pricing.
Vultr has 32 cloud locations on six continents. Hetzner has six: two in Germany, one in Finland, two in the US and one in Singapore.
On Vultr, yes, with a licence fee. Hetzner does not offer Windows images on its cloud.
Vultr, if you want GPUs by the hour: cloud GPUs start at $43.00 a month. Hetzner rents dedicated GPU servers on monthly terms from $263.43.
Hetzner's EU cloud plans include 20 TB of traffic a month. Vultr includes a smaller allowance that grows with the plan size; check each plan's specs in our tracker.