Hetzner vs OVHcloud

At a Glance

If you are building on European infrastructure, Hetzner and OVHcloud are two names that appear on every shortlist. Both are EU-headquartered, both own and operate their own data centres, both offer competitive pricing against the American hyperscalers, and both take data sovereignty seriously. But they serve different scales and different needs.

| | Hetzner | OVHcloud | |---|---|---| | HQ | Gunzenhausen, Germany | Roubaix, France | | Founded | 1997 | 1999 | | Data Centres | Germany (Nuremberg, Falkenstein), Finland (Helsinki) | 40+ globally across 4 continents | | Pricing Model | Paid (monthly/hourly) | Paid (monthly/hourly/pay-as-you-go) | | Public Company | No (private, bootstrapped) | Yes (Euronext Paris) | | Key Strength | Price/performance ratio | Scale and service breadth |

Pricing and Value

Both providers are significantly cheaper than AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. But within the European hosting landscape, Hetzner consistently wins on raw price/performance.

Hetzner's cloud instances start remarkably low, and dedicated servers are available through the famous Server Auction where refurbished hardware sells at steep discounts. The managed Kubernetes control plane is free — you pay only for worker nodes. Object storage uses straightforward per-GB pricing. There are no hidden bandwidth charges or complex pricing calculators to navigate.

OVHcloud is also competitively priced against hyperscalers, often at a fraction of equivalent AWS or GCP costs. Its dedicated server lineup is extensive, and unmetered bandwidth is a genuine advantage for traffic-heavy workloads. However, OVHcloud's pricing structure is more complex, with more tiers and configuration options that require careful comparison.

For pure compute cost, Hetzner typically undercuts OVHcloud. For dedicated servers with generous bandwidth at scale, OVHcloud's offerings become more competitive.

Edge: Hetzner for cloud instances and raw price/performance. OVHcloud for dedicated server variety and bandwidth-inclusive pricing.

Infrastructure and Scale

This is where OVHcloud pulls away. With over 40 data centres across four continents, OVHcloud operates at a scale that Hetzner does not attempt to match. OVHcloud manufactures its own servers and has developed proprietary water-cooling technology. It is publicly traded on Euronext Paris, employs over a thousand people, and serves more than 1.6 million customers. For organisations that need a global footprint with European governance, OVHcloud is the only EU-native option at this scale.

Hetzner operates data centres in Germany (Nuremberg, Falkenstein) and Finland (Helsinki), with additional cloud regions in the United States. This is a focused footprint. If your workloads run in Europe, Hetzner's infrastructure is excellent — ISO 27001 certified, well-connected, and reliably maintained for over 27 years. But if you need data centres in Asia-Pacific, South America, or multiple continents, Hetzner cannot accommodate that today.

Edge: OVHcloud for global reach and infrastructure scale. Hetzner for focused European excellence.

Service Portfolio

OVHcloud offers a broader catalogue of managed services. Public cloud based on OpenStack, private cloud based on VMware, managed Kubernetes, managed databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis), AI training with NVIDIA GPU clusters, vRack private networking spanning multiple data centres, and SecNumCloud-qualified environments for sensitive French government workloads. It is approaching — though not yet matching — hyperscaler breadth.

Hetzner's service portfolio is more focused: cloud servers (shared, dedicated, and ARM64 vCPU), dedicated root servers, block and object storage, managed Kubernetes, load balancers, firewalls, private networks, floating IPs, and DNS. There are no managed databases, no serverless offerings, no AI/ML infrastructure, and no private cloud products. Hetzner provides the building blocks and trusts you to assemble them.

For teams comfortable with self-managed infrastructure, Hetzner's focused portfolio is an asset — less complexity, fewer abstractions, more control. For organisations that need managed services to reduce operational overhead, OVHcloud provides more options.

Edge: OVHcloud for managed service breadth. Hetzner for infrastructure simplicity.

Developer Experience

Hetzner has earned a loyal following among developers for good reason. The Hetzner Cloud API is clean and well-documented. There is an official Terraform provider, a CLI tool (hcloud), and strong community-maintained integrations with Ansible, Pulumi, and Packer. Deploying infrastructure as code on Hetzner is straightforward and the API surface is small enough to learn quickly.

OVHcloud also offers Terraform support, OpenStack APIs (for public cloud), and a comprehensive control panel. However, the developer experience is often cited as less polished. The management console is functional but dated. Documentation, while extensive, can be inconsistent in quality across different services. The API surface is larger and more complex, reflecting the broader service portfolio.

Edge: Hetzner for developer experience and infrastructure-as-code workflows.

EU Compliance and Data Sovereignty

Both providers score highly on EU compliance, but with different profiles.

Hetzner is a German private company with ISO 27001 certified data centres in Germany and Finland. Data Processing Agreements are available for all customers. When using EU regions, all data stays within the EU. Hetzner's compliance story is straightforward: German company, German data centres, German law.

OVHcloud adds additional layers of compliance certification. ISO 27001, 27017, and 27018. SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II. HDS certification for French healthcare data. And critically, SecNumCloud qualification from ANSSI (the French national cybersecurity agency), which is required for certain French government and regulated industry workloads. OVHcloud's compliance portfolio is more extensive, reflecting its enterprise and public sector customer base.

Edge: OVHcloud for certified compliance depth. Hetzner for clean, uncomplicated EU data residency.

When to Choose Hetzner

Hetzner is the right choice for developers, startups, and technically capable teams that want the best possible performance per euro spent on European infrastructure. If you are comfortable managing your own databases, setting up your own monitoring, and assembling infrastructure from well-documented building blocks, Hetzner rewards that self-sufficiency with exceptional pricing.

It is particularly well-suited for Kubernetes workloads (with free control planes), side projects and indie hacking (where every euro counts), development and staging environments, and high-traffic applications where compute cost is a primary concern.

Choose Hetzner if you want maximum infrastructure value and have the technical team to run it.

When to Choose OVHcloud

OVHcloud is the right choice for organisations that need a European cloud provider with global reach and enterprise-grade compliance. If you need data centres on multiple continents, managed databases, private cloud environments, GPU clusters for AI training, or SecNumCloud-qualified hosting for regulated workloads, OVHcloud is the only EU-native provider that offers all of these.

It is particularly well-suited for enterprises migrating from AWS or Azure who want EU governance, public sector organisations with strict compliance requirements, companies needing VMware-based private cloud, and organisations that need a single European vendor for a wide range of cloud services.

Choose OVHcloud if you want European-scale cloud infrastructure with the compliance certifications to serve regulated industries.

The Verdict

Hetzner and OVHcloud are both excellent European hosting providers, and the choice between them often comes down to scale and self-sufficiency.

Hetzner is the developers' favourite for a reason. Its pricing is unmatched in Europe, its infrastructure is reliable, and its focused service portfolio means less complexity and fewer moving parts. For teams that want to build on solid, affordable European infrastructure and handle the rest themselves, Hetzner is hard to beat.

OVHcloud is Europe's answer to the hyperscalers. Its global data centre footprint, broad service catalogue, and deep compliance certifications make it the natural choice for enterprises and regulated organisations that need more than what a focused infrastructure provider can offer.

For most startups and development teams, Hetzner will deliver better value. For enterprise workloads and organisations that need compliance certifications, global reach, or managed services, OVHcloud is the more complete platform. Both are proudly European, both own their infrastructure, and both demonstrate that European cloud providers can compete on cost without compromising on quality.