DEV Community

Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

Posted on

Hetzner Has the Cheapest VPS — €3.79/Month for 2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 40GB SSD (Free Trial Credits)

#hetzner #vps #devops #free

Every developer who's compared VPS pricing has the same reaction when they see Hetzner for the first time: "Wait, that can't be right."

€3.79/month for 2 shared vCPU, 4GB RAM, 40GB NVMe SSD, and 20TB bandwidth. That's not a Black Friday deal. That's the regular price. And new accounts get €20 in trial credits — enough to run a server for 5+ months.

What You Get

Hetzner isn't free, but €3.79/month is so close to free that it deserves a spot here. New accounts get trial credits:

  • €20 trial credits — no credit card required initially
  • CX22: 2 vCPU (shared), 4GB RAM, 40GB NVMe SSD — €3.79/month
  • 20TB bandwidth included (yes, terabytes)
  • 5 datacenters — Nuremberg, Falkenstein, Helsinki, Ashburn (US), Singapore
  • Snapshots — €0.01/GB/month for server backups
  • Floating IPs — static IPs you can move between servers
  • Firewalls — free, managed through dashboard or API
  • Load balancers — from €5.39/month
  • Full API — create/destroy servers programmatically

Quick Start 

# Install hcloud CLI
brew install hcloud  # macOS
# or: snap install hcloud  # Linux

# Auth
hcloud context create my-project
# Enter API token from cloud.hetzner.com

# Create server
hcloud server create --name my-server --type cx22 --image ubuntu-24.04 --location nbg1

# SSH in
ssh root@$(hcloud server ip my-server)
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Server created in ~10 seconds. Billed by the hour (€0.006/hour for CX22).

Real Example: Deploy a Full Stack 

# Create server
hcloud server create --name app --type cx22 --image ubuntu-24.04

# SSH and setup
ssh root@YOUR_IP << 'SETUP'
apt update && apt install -y docker.io docker-compose-v2
mkdir -p /opt/app && cd /opt/app

cat > docker-compose.yml << 'EOF'
services:
  app:
    image: node:20-slim
    working_dir: /app
    volumes:
      - ./app:/app
    ports:
      - "80:3000"
    command: node server.js
  db:
    image: postgres:16
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: secret
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
volumes:
  pgdata:
EOF

docker compose up -d
SETUP
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Full-stack app with PostgreSQL for €3.79/month. No Kubernetes. No managed services.

What You Can Build

1. Self-hosted PocketBase/Supabase — run your own backend on actual hardware. €3.79/month vs $25/month cloud.

2. Docker host — 4GB RAM runs 5-10 containers easily. Your personal cloud.

3. VPN/proxy — WireGuard server in 5 minutes. Private browsing from EU/US/Asia.

4. CI/CD runner — self-hosted GitHub Actions runner. Unlimited minutes.

5. Game server — Minecraft, Valheim, Terraria. 4GB handles most games.

Why Hetzner Pricing Is Real

Hetzner owns their datacenters and hardware. No AWS markup. No venture-capital-subsidized pricing that'll triple next year. They've been profitable and stable since 1997.

The catch: support is minimal (no 24/7 phone support on basic plans), the US datacenter is newer (fewer features), and they don't have the managed service ecosystem of AWS/GCP.

But if you know how to SSH into a server and install Docker — Hetzner gives you 10x the resources for 1/10th the price of competitors.

Need server automation or deployment scripts? Email spinov001@gmail.com

More free tiers: 43+ Free APIs Every Developer Should Bookmark

Top comments (0)