Is Hetzner Cloud or UpCloud cheaper in 2026?

Hetzner Cloud is cheaper in all 3 modelled workloads.

What is the difference in egress cost between Hetzner Cloud and UpCloud?

Hetzner Cloud charges $0.0012 per GB against UpCloud's $0.010, roughly 8.3× cheaper. Egress usually dominates the bill once traffic is measured in terabytes.

Which has the better free tier, Hetzner Cloud or UpCloud?

Hetzner Cloud does — 20 TB of traffic included with every server. UpCloud bills from the first unit of usage.

What do these estimates not include?

Committed-use and reserved discounts, regional price variation, per-request API charges, support plans, and minimum retention periods. All of those move real invoices, sometimes by a lot. These figures compare published list prices for the same workload, which is the comparison the rate cards alone cannot give you.

Hetzner Cloud vs UpCloud

Hetzner Cloud is cheaper across every workload modelled here.

List prices checked May 2026

Rate cards side by side

Only the axes at least one of them bills on. A dash means that provider does not charge for it.

Billing axis	Hetzner Cloud	UpCloud	Difference
Entry plan	$3.79/mo	$5.00/mo	1.3× Hetzner Cloud
Compute	$0.0052/vCPU-hr	$0.0074/vCPU-hr	1.4× Hetzner Cloud
Data transfer out	$0.0012/GB	$0.010/GB	8.3× Hetzner Cloud
Free tier	Yes	No	—

Source: Hetzner pricing (May 2026) · UpCloud pricing (May 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.

Monthly cost for three real workloads

The rate cards applied to identical usage. This is where the winner changes.

Workload	Hetzner Cloud	UpCloud	Cheaper
Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process.	$3.80	$5.40	Hetzner Cloudsaves $1.61/mo (30%)
Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers.	$7.59	$11	Hetzner Cloudsaves $3.21/mo (30%)
Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought.	$3.80	$95	Hetzner Cloudsaves $92/mo (96%)

Workload definitions are identical on every comparison page, so figures here can be read against any other pair in the same category.

What each one is for

Hetzner Cloud

by Hetzner

The cheapest mainstream cloud compute by a wide margin, with 20 TB of traffic bundled into every instance. Regions are limited to Germany, Finland, Singapore, and the United States.

Free tier: 20 TB of traffic included with every server

UpCloud

by UpCloud

A Finnish host selling on MaxIOPS block storage performance, with a transfer allowance per instance and pricing close to DigitalOcean's.

Common questions

Is Hetzner Cloud or UpCloud cheaper in 2026?: Hetzner Cloud is cheaper in all 3 modelled workloads.
What is the difference in egress cost between Hetzner Cloud and UpCloud?: Hetzner Cloud charges $0.0012 per GB against UpCloud's $0.010, roughly 8.3× cheaper. Egress usually dominates the bill once traffic is measured in terabytes.
Which has the better free tier, Hetzner Cloud or UpCloud?: Hetzner Cloud does — 20 TB of traffic included with every server. UpCloud bills from the first unit of usage.
What do these estimates not include?: Committed-use and reserved discounts, regional price variation, per-request API charges, support plans, and minimum retention periods. All of those move real invoices, sometimes by a lot. These figures compare published list prices for the same workload, which is the comparison the rate cards alone cannot give you.