Hetzner CX23 is a 2 vCPU (shared Intel/AMD), 4 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe, 20 TB traffic cloud server for €5.49 ($6.49) a month excl. VAT and IPv4, or €5.99 ($7.09) with the optional IPv4, since June 15, 2026 (it was €3.99). It’s sold only in Germany and Finland. Vultr’s $6 High Performance plan gives 1 vCPU, 1 GB, 25 GB NVMe and 2 TB.
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Who wins for what
The winner depends on the use case:
| Use Case | Winner |
|---|---|
| Based in the US or APAC | Vultr $6 (CX23 isn’t even available there) |
| Based in Europe | Hetzner CX23 (better specs, lower latency, GDPR-native) |
| Running WordPress or multi-threaded apps | Hetzner CX23 (2 cores beat 1 fast core) |
| Need high disk IOPS (databases, cache) | Vultr $6 (NVMe random I/O edge) |
| Running single-threaded workloads | Vultr $6 (AMD EPYC single-core is ~2× faster) |
| High-bandwidth or traffic-heavy sites | Hetzner CX23 (20 TB vs 2 TB included transfer) |
| Need Windows Server | Vultr $6 (Hetzner doesn’t offer Windows) |
| Budget-conscious EU developer | Hetzner CX23 (more machine per euro) |
Plan specs: Vultr $6 vs Hetzner CX23 side by side
Let’s get the raw numbers out of the way.
| Specification | Vultr High Performance $6/mo | Hetzner CX23 |
|---|---|---|
| vCPU | 1 vCPU (AMD EPYC; our Tokyo instance reported EPYC-Rome) | 2 vCPU (Intel/AMD shared) |
| RAM | 1 GB | 4 GB |
| Storage | 25 GB NVMe SSD | 40 GB NVMe SSD |
| Monthly Transfer | 2 TB | 20 TB |
| Base Price | $6.00/mo | €5.49/mo (~$6.49 USD) |
| IPv4 | Included | Extra: €0.50/mo ($0.60) |
| Total w/ IPv4 | $6.00/mo | $7.09/mo USD |
| CPU Generation | AMD EPYC (third-party spec listings: Genoa, 3.25 GHz; lscpu on our Tokyo instance: EPYC-Rome) | Intel or AMD (shared, older gen) |
| Storage Type | NVMe SSD | NVMe SSD (RAID-10) |
| Network Port | Up to 1 Gbps | Up to 1 Gbps |
| IPv6 | Available (not default) | Included free |
The spec gap is hard to ignore. You get 4× more RAM and 2× the cores with Hetzner for about a dollar more per month. But specs on paper and usable performance are two different things, and Hetzner’s CX tier runs on older shared hardware. More on that in the benchmarks section.
For our best cheap VPS roundup, these two consistently trade spots near the top of the under-$10 tier. But they serve genuinely different workloads.
Pricing breakdown: the Hetzner price hike
This is the most important context for 2026 comparisons. Hetzner’s CX23 used to cost €3.99/mo ($4.99 USD), a steal by any measure. On June 15, 2026, that changed.
Hetzner cited sharply higher hardware costs as the driver. The CX23 went from €3.99 to €5.49/mo, a 37.6% jump. Add the optional public IPv4 address (€0.50/mo), which Hetzner bills separately, and your real monthly bill for a CX23 with a public IP hits €5.99/mo ($7.09 USD).
Vultr’s $6 plan includes IPv4 with no surcharge, so it’s one line item.
So if you’re reading an older comparison that shows Hetzner CX23 as “the obvious cheap choice,” those numbers are outdated as of mid-June 2026.
Vultr isn’t the clear price winner, though. At $7 vs $6, Hetzner still gives you dramatically more hardware. But the era of Hetzner being “half the price of the competition” is over, at least at this tier.
Vultr’s $6 plan comes with $300 in free credit for new accounts (valid 30 days), which is a solid way to test whether the single-core AMD EPYC setup works for your workload before you commit.
Which Vultr $6? In our test the AMD plan did 3.68x High Frequency’s CPU work
“Vultr $6” can mean two different machines: the High Performance AMD plan this post compares, and the High Frequency (Intel) plan at the same price. We benchmarked both in Tokyo on 2026-09-25 (Ubuntu 24.04, one run each): 30 seconds of single-thread sysbench cpu, a 30-second fio 4k random read at queue depth 32, and a 30-second fio 1M sequential write. We did not test a Hetzner CX23. The CX23 figures in this post come from the published benchmarks cited in the next section, and the table below is Vultr-only.
| Metric (our test, Tokyo) | Vultr High Performance AMD $6 | Vultr High Frequency $6 |
|---|---|---|
| CPU reported by lscpu | AMD EPYC-Rome Processor | Intel Core Processor (Skylake) |
| sysbench CPU, 1 thread | 4303.83 events/s | 1170.04 events/s |
| fio 4k random read, QD32 | 107k IOPS (418 MiB/s) | 110k IOPS (432 MiB/s) |
| Avg 4k read latency | 298.59 µs | 288.88 µs |
| fio 1M sequential write | 1816 MiB/s | 1017 MiB/s |
At the same price, the AMD plan did 4303.83 events/s against 1170.04 (3.68x) and wrote sequentially at 1816 vs 1017 MiB/s (1.79x). Random reads were a tie within what one run can separate: 107k vs 110k IOPS. If you’re taking the Vultr side of this comparison, the AMD plan is the one to deploy; High Frequency only makes sense at $6 if you specifically need Intel.
One detail changed the spec table above: the published specs list the $6 AMD plan as EPYC-Genoa, but lscpu on our Tokyo instance reported EPYC-Rome, an older generation. Vultr may run different hardware in different regions, so run lscpu on your own box rather than trusting a spec sheet. For the same reason, don’t set our numbers against the CX23 figures below as if they came from one test. Our 107k read-only IOPS is in the same range as the ~118,400 4K figure from Better Stack’s YABS run on a High Performance plan, but that’s a different test suite, and sysbench events/s and Geekbench 6 scores aren’t the same scale.
What our run can’t tell you is how one fast core compares with the CX23’s two shared ones under parallel load. That’s where the published WordPress load test below favors Hetzner. The full three-plan run, raw output included, is in our Vultr Cloud Compute vs High Frequency benchmark.
Honest scope: one 30-second sample per plan in one region (Tokyo) on 2026-09-25. A snapshot, not a long-term average. Hetzner’s side was not measured by us.
Performance & benchmarks
CPU: speed vs. count
Comparing single-core performance across providers, Vultr’s AMD EPYC core is genuinely impressive for the price. The single-core Geekbench 6 score extrapolated from BetterStack’s 2026 benchmarks comes in at around 1,926, about twice what the Hetzner CX23 manages (~939).
For workloads that are single-threaded by nature (cron jobs, CLI tools, some Python scripts), Vultr’s faster core matters more than Hetzner’s two slower ones.
Flip to multi-threaded workloads (web servers, WordPress under real traffic, Node.js with multiple concurrent requests) and the picture reverses. Two cores at 939 single-core will outrun one core at 1,926 in parallel tasks. ManagingWP.io’s WordPress load test put this concretely: Hetzner’s dual-core showed double the response count and half the average load time compared to a comparable Vultr single-core setup.
Disk I/O
Vultr’s NVMe storage looks like the stronger side, but the published figure comes from a bigger plan: Better Stack’s YABS benchmark of a Vultr High Performance 2 vCPU / 4 GB plan (the $24 tier) measured ~118,400 disk IOPS (4K random, read and write combined) vs. Hetzner CX23’s ~40,900 IOPS. The $6 plan wasn’t in that test, so don’t read that gap as a $6 result. If you’re running a database (even a small one) or a high-write application, benchmark your own instance before counting on it.
Hetzner’s CX23 uses NVMe on RAID-10, which is solid, but the underlying hardware generation is older, and it shows in the IOPS numbers.
Network
Both providers hit similar throughput: Vultr around 8.11 Gbits/sec, Hetzner around 8.08 Gbits/sec in EU-to-EU tests. At this tier, network isn’t your bottleneck.
Consistency
VPSBenchmarks scores Hetzner consistency at 71 vs. Vultr’s 61. That matters for production workloads, where predictable performance is often more valuable than peak performance. Hetzner also provisions servers faster: ~25 seconds vs. Vultr’s ~85 seconds.
Geographic availability: the US problem
Comparisons often leave this caveat out.
Vultr operates 33 data center regions in 20 countries across 6 continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. You can deploy close to users in New York, Tokyo, Singapore, São Paulo, or Sydney on the same $6 plan.
Hetzner has 6 locations. The CX23 is only available in three of them, all in Europe.
| Location | CX23 Available? |
|---|---|
| Falkenstein, Germany | Yes |
| Nuremberg, Germany | Yes |
| Helsinki, Finland | Yes |
| Ashburn, Virginia, USA | No (CPX and CCX only) |
| Hillsboro, Oregon, USA | No (CPX and CCX only) |
| Singapore | No (CPX and CCX only) |
Hetzner does have US data centers. But the budget CX tier, the one with CX23, is EU-only. If you spin up a server at Hetzner’s US locations, you’re on the CPX or CCX series, which costs significantly more (the cheapest US plan, CPX11, lists at $20.49/mo after June 15).
For any US-based developer or anyone whose users are primarily in North America or Asia-Pacific, Hetzner CX23 is simply not an option at this price point unless you’re okay with 100-140ms transatlantic latency.
If you need global deployment at the $6 tier, Vultr is the only real option. See our full Vultr vs Hetzner comparison for a deeper look at how they stack up across the full product lineup.
Feature differences
DDoS protection
Hetzner includes network-level DDoS protection and a stateful firewall at no extra charge. On Vultr, DDoS protection is a paid add-on: $10/month per instance for 10 Gbps of mitigation capacity, which more than doubles the bill on the $6 plan. If DDoS protection matters for your project, Hetzner is the cleaner choice.
OS support
Vultr supports Linux and Windows Server (with an additional license fee). Hetzner is Linux-only, with no Windows support on cloud instances. Custom images are supported on both via snapshot uploads.
Backups and snapshots
| Feature | Vultr $6 | Hetzner CX23 |
|---|---|---|
| Manual snapshots | $0.05/GB/month | Available (storage billed) |
| Automated backups | 20% of plan ($1.20/mo) | Available |
Both cover the basics. Vultr’s backup pricing is explicit and predictable; Hetzner’s snapshot costs depend on your usage.
API & automation
Both providers have solid REST APIs, Terraform providers, and CLI tools. Vultr’s ecosystem includes Kubernetes operator support and Ansible integration. Hetzner’s hcloud CLI is simple to script and Terraform support is mature.
Support
Neither provider is known for blazing-fast support response. Vultr support is ticket-based. Hetzner leans on community forums and documentation (which are genuinely good), with no phone support for cloud products. Vultr’s control panel is cleaner for beginners.
Payment
Vultr accepts credit cards, PayPal, cryptocurrency, and Alipay. Hetzner accepts credit cards, PayPal, and SEPA bank transfers in Europe, useful for EU businesses billing directly from bank accounts.
Who should choose which
Choose Vultr $6 if:
- You’re in the US, APAC, or Latin America. There’s no comparable Hetzner plan available in your region. Vultr’s $6 High Performance plan is listed in 30 (AMD) or 31 (Intel) locations, so you get actual geographic options at $6/mo.
- Your workload is single-threaded. The AMD EPYC core (~1,926 Geekbench 6 single-core in BetterStack’s data; 4303.83 sysbench events/s in our Tokyo test) is genuinely fast. CLI scripts, low-concurrency APIs, development environments: one fast core often beats two slow ones.
- Disk IOPS matter to you. Vultr’s High Performance plans run on NVMe, and Better Stack measured ~118,400 IOPS on the $24 tier vs ~40,900 for the CX23. The $6 plan wasn’t part of that test, so check your own instance if databases, caching layers, or write-heavy apps are the point.
- You need Windows Server. Hetzner won’t run it.
Vultr‘s sign-up offer includes $300 free credit for 30 days, far more than a month of the $6 plan needs, so you can test your stack (and a few bigger plans) under real conditions before the credit expires.
Not a good fit for: EU users who want low-latency hosting, high-bandwidth applications, or multi-threaded workloads that would benefit from two cores and 4 GB of RAM.
Choose Hetzner CX23 if:
- Your users are in Europe. Germany and Finland data centers with sub-20ms intra-EU latency. GDPR compliance is baked in. For EU SaaS products or European audiences, this is hard to beat.
- You need more RAM. 4 GB vs 1 GB is a massive difference at this price tier. PHP-based CMS setups, small databases, multiple services running simultaneously: 1 GB RAM on Vultr’s $6 plan will hit limits fast.
- You’re running a WordPress site or multi-threaded server. Real-world load tests favor two cores for concurrent web traffic. At similar prices, Hetzner’s dual-core setup handles WordPress under load better than a single fast core.
- Bandwidth is a concern. 20 TB vs 2 TB per month is a 10× gap. Vultr’s overage rate is $10/TB; Hetzner’s is €1 ($1.20)/TB. If you’re serving media or running a high-traffic site, the math strongly favors Hetzner.
- You want DDoS protection without paying extra. Hetzner includes it free.
Not a good fit for: Anyone outside Europe who needs low-latency performance, US deployments, Windows workloads, or disk-intensive applications.
For a deeper breakdown of Vultr’s full offering, check out our full Vultr review.
Hetzner in Europe, Vultr everywhere else
The Hetzner CX23 price hike changed the math. The conclusion is the same; the decision just depends more on location than it did.
If you’re in Europe: Hetzner CX23 is still the better buy at ~$7/month. You get 4× the RAM, 2× the CPU cores, and 10× the bandwidth. For EU users, the answer hasn’t really changed post-hike; you’re just paying slightly more for a machine that’s still head-and-shoulders above what $7 gets you anywhere else in the EU market.
If you’re outside Europe: Vultr $6 wins by default, because Hetzner CX23 literally isn’t available to you at this price. Beyond geography, Vultr’s AMD EPYC single-core performance is genuinely fast, its NVMe disks post strong IOPS in published benchmarks of its larger plans, and $300 in free credit makes it easy to run a real test before committing.
The only case where the choice gets genuinely difficult is EU developers who run single-threaded workloads and care more about disk IOPS than RAM. For everyone else, geography decides it.
Ready to test Vultr’s $6 plan? New accounts get $300 in free credit, valid for 30 days, new customers only (check the terms when you sign up).
Pricing verified as of October 5, 2026. Hetzner prices in EUR; USD figures are Hetzner’s own USD list prices (excl. VAT). All prices subject to change; verify at vultr.com/pricing and hetzner.com/cloud.
