Hetzner is the price-performance king for EU cloud compute — cheap, fast, GDPR-compliant, and genuinely impressive on raw specs. redu.cloud is built for startups that need more than cheap servers: managed databases, autoscaling clusters, AI agent control via MCP, and a full cloud platform that reduces the operational burden on your team.
Hetzner wins on raw compute cost. redu.cloud wins when you need managed services, AI agent automation, and a full cloud platform.
The right choice depends on how much operational work your team wants to own, whether you need managed services, and how important AI agent automation is to your workflow.
Hetzner's price-performance for raw EU servers is genuinely excellent. For teams that can manage their own infrastructure, the cost savings are real.
Even after April 2026 price increases, Hetzner's Cost-Optimized plans from €3.99/month remain among the best value raw compute in Europe. If budget is the primary constraint and you can manage your own infrastructure, Hetzner is hard to beat on cost.
Hetzner's 20 TB monthly traffic allowance in EU regions is five times what DigitalOcean includes at equivalent pricing. For high-bandwidth workloads, this is a significant cost advantage.
Hetzner's 20 TB monthly transfer in EU regions is five times what most competitors include. For high-bandwidth batch workloads, media processing, or data-heavy pipelines where egress cost is the dominant factor, Hetzner's economics are hard to beat.
If your team is comfortable with manual server management, writing their own automation, and does not need managed databases or platform services, Hetzner's low cost makes it a sensible choice.
Cheap raw compute is only cheap until you factor in the engineering time to run databases, build automation, configure Kubernetes, and manage backups. redu.cloud includes the managed layer.
redu.cloud's MCP server lets AI coding agents provision VMs, volumes, clusters, and databases directly. Hetzner provides no MCP integration or AI-driven infrastructure automation — everything is manual or custom-scripted.
Hetzner has no managed database offering. If you need PostgreSQL or Redis, you set it up yourself on a VM. redu.cloud provides managed PostgreSQL and Redis instances alongside your compute, monitored from the same console.
Hetzner's managed service layer is intentionally narrow — no container registry, no PaaS, no CDN, no managed databases. redu.cloud provides the cloud building blocks (clusters, databases, networking, backups) that reduce the operational burden on your team.
Hetzner's Managed Kubernetes requires manual node pool setup and configuration. redu.cloud's autoscaling clusters are deployable from the console or via AI agent in the MCP server — no Kubernetes expertise required as a prerequisite.
The question is how much operational work your team wants to own. Cheap servers are only cheap if someone is not spending engineering time running everything on them.
Raw server cost is only part of the picture. Use the redu.cloud pricing calculator to estimate compute, managed databases, storage, bandwidth, and networking in one place.
Practical answers for startups comparing Hetzner with redu.cloud in 2026.
For raw compute, yes — Hetzner's VMs are among the cheapest in Europe. The total cost comparison changes when you factor in managed databases, snapshots, load balancers, and cluster management, which Hetzner requires you to build and operate yourself.
Yes. Hetzner announced price adjustments effective April 2026, with some plans increasing by up to 37% due to DRAM and NAND flash cost increases across the industry. Cost-Optimized plans now start at €3.99/month and Regular Performance plans at €7.99/month — still competitive in the EU market.
No. Hetzner provides raw cloud compute. AI agent infrastructure automation via MCP is not a supported workflow. redu.cloud ships a native MCP server with 20 tools included in the platform — AI coding agents can provision and manage infrastructure directly.
No. Hetzner has no managed database product. If you need PostgreSQL or Redis, you provision a VM and run it yourself. redu.cloud provides managed PostgreSQL and Redis instances alongside compute — provisioned and monitored from the same console.
Yes. redu.cloud is a UK company with production infrastructure in Germany. All data stays in the EU — GDPR-compliant by default, equivalent to Hetzner on data residency. EU residency is not a Hetzner exclusive.
A startup may choose redu.cloud when it needs more than cheap raw servers — managed databases, autoscaling clusters, MCP-native AI agent control, snapshot workflows, and a full cloud platform that reduces the operational burden on the team. Both are EU-based and GDPR-compliant.
Yes. Some teams use Hetzner for high-bandwidth batch workloads where the 20 TB transfer allowance is a real advantage, and redu.cloud for the managed cloud infrastructure that benefits from automation and agent control.
Create an account, test real cloud infrastructure with managed databases, autoscaling clusters, and AI agent control — and decide using your own workload.
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