Quick answer: Contabo wins on raw RAM and disk per euro: its entry Cloud VPS 4 lists 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM and 100 GB SSD from €4.40/mo on a 24-month term. Hetzner wins on consistency and flexibility: hourly billing with a monthly cap, a polished API and cloud firewall, 20 TB of EU traffic, and widely reported steadier CPU performance (CX23: 2 vCPU, 4 GB, 40 GB NVMe for €5.99/mo excl. VAT). Pick Contabo for memory-hungry hobby projects and local LLM tests. Pick Hetzner for production apps, AI agents and anything you scale up and down.
Head-to-head (published specs, 21 Oct 2026)
| Hetzner Cloud | Contabo Cloud VPS | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan we compared | CX23: 2 vCPU, 4 GB, 40 GB NVMe | Cloud VPS 4: 4 vCPU, 8 GB, 100 GB SSD |
| Listed price | €5.99/mo excl. VAT | from €4.40/mo (24-month term) |
| Step-up plan | Larger shared/dedicated vCPU plans | Cloud VPS 6: 6 vCPU, 12 GB (from €6.00) · VPS 8: 8 vCPU, 24 GB (from €11.20) |
| ARM option | Yes (CAX11 from €6.49) | No |
| Billing | Hourly with monthly cap | Monthly or term; longer terms cheaper |
| Traffic | 20 TB included (EU) | Generous; entry port 200 Mbit/s |
| Locations | Germany, Finland, USA, Singapore | EU, UK, USA, Singapore, Japan, India, Australia |
| One-click apps | Apps (Docker, WordPress, etc.) | OpenClaw, n8n and other images |
| Snapshots/backups | Paid snapshots and backups | Paid add-ons |
| Best for | Production, developers, scaling | Max RAM on a budget, hobby/lab use |
From each provider's official site. Published specs, not GetBestHost lab benchmarks. Hetzner says Cost-Optimized plans have limited availability.
Price and resources
On paper, Contabo is hard to beat. Its entry plan has twice the RAM and vCPUs of Hetzner's CX23 for a lower monthly rate on a long term. If your workload is memory-bound and not latency-sensitive, Contabo stretches a budget furthest. Examples: an Ollama model, a few Docker containers, a dev box.
Hetzner charges a little more and gives you hourly billing. You can spin up a server for a two-hour test and pay cents. That flexibility matters for developers and for AI experiments.
Performance and consistency
We have not benchmarked these providers ourselves yet. Contabo labels this line "proven hardware" and positions it for lighter workloads. Community benchmarks and reviews often describe Hetzner's CPU and disk performance as more consistent. If your app needs steady response times, such as a SaaS backend or an API, that consistency is worth the extra euro or two.
Platform and tooling
Hetzner Cloud has a clean console, an API, a CLI (hcloud), Terraform support, cloud firewalls, private networks, load balancers and volumes. OpenClaw's docs even include a dedicated Hetzner install guide. Contabo's panel is simpler. Its strengths are the one-click images (OpenClaw, n8n) and the large plan sizes.
Which should you choose?
- AI agent on API models, production bot or web app: Hetzner.
- Local LLM tests, big Docker labs, lots of RAM cheaply: Contabo.
- Never used Linux: neither. Look at Hostinger VPS with templates and a simple panel.
- Need managed WordPress on cloud servers: Cloudways.
Full field: best VPS for AI agents.
3-year cost at the same RAM
Monthly price alone hides how much memory you get. Here is what each plan costs over 36 months at its published list price (21 Oct 2026, excl. VAT). For Contabo, we assume you renew on the same 24-month term at the same price. Confirm that at checkout, because Contabo's monthly-term prices are higher.
| Plan | RAM | Price | 36-month total | Cost per GB RAM per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner CX23 | 4 GB | €5.99/mo, hourly billing | €215.64 | €1.50 |
| Contabo Cloud VPS 4 | 8 GB | €4.40/mo (24-mo term) | €158.40 | €0.55 |
| Contabo Cloud VPS 6 | 12 GB | €6.00/mo (24-mo term) | €216.00 | €0.50 |
| Contabo Cloud VPS 8 | 24 GB | €11.20/mo (24-mo term) | €403.20 | €0.47 |
| Contabo Cloud VPS 12 | 48 GB | €20.00/mo (24-mo term) | €720.00 | €0.42 |
The gap per GB is large, about 3× in Contabo's favour. Whether it matters depends on the workload. A Telegram bot or an API-based AI agent rarely uses more than 2 GB, so Hetzner's flexibility wins. A CPU-only Ollama box running a 13B model needs 16 GB or more, and there Contabo's RAM per euro is hard to ignore. Size your workload first with the VPS calculator.
Visitors or users in Asia
Both providers list a Singapore location. Contabo also lists Japan, India and Australia. For users in Bangladesh, India or Southeast Asia, choose the Asian region at checkout, then measure it from your own connection with our latency test. A server in Germany adds a long round trip to every request from South Asia.
Security baseline (either provider)
Both are unmanaged: you are the sysadmin. On day one:
- Log in with an SSH key, disable password login, and create a non-root sudo user.
- Allow only ports 22, 80 and 443 (Hetzner has a free cloud firewall; on Contabo use
ufw). - Turn on automatic security updates (
unattended-upgradeson Ubuntu). - Never expose dashboards (n8n, Open WebUI, agent control ports) without HTTPS and authentication. Use an SSH tunnel or Tailscale for admin access.
- Keep backups off the server. Snapshots are not backups if the account is lost.
Who should avoid each
- Avoid Hetzner if you need more than 8 GB of RAM on a small budget, or if the Cost-Optimized plans you want are out of stock in your region.
- Avoid Contabo if you need fast hourly spin-up and tear-down, very consistent CPU performance, or a polished API/Terraform workflow.
- Avoid both if you have never used a Linux terminal. Start with Hostinger VPS, whose panel and templates make the first month easier.
Sources
Prices and specs come from hetzner.com/cloud and contabo.com/en/vps, checked 21 Oct 2026, and are stored in our open price dataset. Quick side-by-side table: Contabo vs Hetzner. Note: Hetzner discontinued its referral program in 2026, so we earn nothing from Hetzner links.