# Hetzner 415 Hacker News commenters recommended Hetzner and 212 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 5 years (40 owners). **Verdict:** Recommended for cheap, powerful cloud and bare-metal servers that cost far less than AWS or DigitalOcean, though sign-up ID checks are strict and recent price hikes upset people. ## Why people recommend it - Far cheaper than big clouds (8 comments): "It's very budget friendly and has a very small list of services so its much harder to screw yourself into a situation where its hard to leave." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48093651)) "Everything which cloud companies provide just cost so much, my own postgres running with HA setup and backup cost me 1/10th the price" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872619)) "I've seen couple of small firms using hetzner very successfully and saving a lot of money compared to whatever cloud offering" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094456)) - Generous hardware and strong performance (6 comments): "the latter have much better performance (especially since they give you basically infinite IOPS, which matters a lot for your database)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552352)) "the resources available on each server are so great in comparison to DO that there's plenty of room to grow vertically" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834719)) "Hardware I rend from Hetzner is usually 16 core AMD with 128GB RAM and couple of nvme's. Never had single failure." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130021)) - Reliable over many years (5 comments): "None of them which has any issues as far as I know. They used to have some issues with the very old stuff in Falkstien." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46373078)) "I have a bunch of Hetzner boxes for different web projects that I've had forever and never heard a peep from them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46664672)) "Hardware I rend from Hetzner is usually 16 core AMD with 128GB RAM and couple of nvme's. Never had single failure." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130021)) - Simple, no cloud complexity (3 comments): "It's very budget friendly and has a very small list of services so its much harder to screw yourself into a situation where its hard to leave." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48093651)) "It is so freeing to not have to deal with big tech's VMs and their cumbersome and soul-sucking steps and documentation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820996)) "If you know what you're doing Hetzner is godsend, they give you hardware and several DCs and it's up to you what you can do." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45919877)) ## What people warn about - Strict ID checks, blocked accounts (6 comments): "Hetzner is famously aggressive with their KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements, often locking new sign-ups and asking for photos of ID." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48204224)) "They blocked my account almost immediately after registration, and they refused to unblock it even after I sent them my ID." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49191953)) "I was unable to verify myself by any acceptable means due to being based in a country other than that of my passport." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46069844)) - Steep, poorly communicated price increases (5 comments): "Its just simply unsustainable and burns a lot of trust/good will if you increase your prices 3x in such a short period of time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48657677)) "Not even because of the price increases themselves, but rather because the way in which they've communicated those." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544538)) "how can you imagine being competitive with US cloud providers by raising the prices so much, in such a short time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48657557)) - Opaque operations (2 comments): "They control the overarching hypervisor and control plane managing your servers/VM's, so there's no way to know what capabilities have been implemented." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48772661)) "Their operations are so opaque that if they were refusing service to people with green eyes we wouldn't even know." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47134393)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [DigitalOcean](https://hackerapproved.com/p/digitalocean.md): 133 recommend - [exe.dev](https://hackerapproved.com/p/exe-dev.md): 115 recommend - [Hetzner Cloud](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hetzner-cloud.md): 99 recommend - [OVH hosting](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ovh.md): 81 recommend - [Amazon EC2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-ec2.md): 73 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.hetzner.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Hetzner", https://hackerapproved.com/p/hetzner/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).