Hetzner Cloud vs Northflank: Complete Comparison (2026)
An in-depth comparison of Hetzner Cloud and Northflank to help you choose the right tool for your business.
Last updated: November 2026
Hetzner Cloud
6.2/10
Hourly-billed virtual cloud servers, object storage, networking and load balancers from German host Hetzner, aimed at developers and cost-conscious technical teams.
Northflank
7.2/10
Northflank is a Kubernetes-based developer platform for deploying services, jobs, databases and GPU workloads on its managed cloud or on customers' own cloud accounts.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | H Hetzner Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 6.2/10 | 7.2/10 |
| Integration | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Support | 4/10 | 7/10 |
| Cost | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Customization | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Security | 6/10 | 7/10 |
| Reliability | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Analytics | 4/10 | 6/10 |
| Scalability | 6/10 | 8/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | €6/mo Cost-Optimized CX23 | Contact for pricing |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | €6/mo Cost-Optimized CX23 | Free Sandbox |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Automatic Backups | ||
| Cloud Compute | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| Uptime SLA | ||
| DDoS Protection | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| Free SSL Certificates | Not listed | |
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Managed Databases | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
Hetzner Cloud vs Northflank cost by team size
| Team size | Hetzner Cloud | Northflank |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | €6/moCost-Optimized CX23 | FreeSandbox |
| 5 users | €6/moCost-Optimized CX23 | FreeSandbox |
| 10 users | €6/moCost-Optimized CX23 | FreeSandbox |
| 25 users | €6/moCost-Optimized CX23 | FreeSandbox |
| 50 users | €6/moCost-Optimized CX23 | FreeSandbox |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Which One Should You Choose?
HWhy choose Hetzner Cloud
- Higher Cost score (8/10 vs 7/10)
Why choose Northflank
- Has a free plan (Hetzner Cloud does not)
- Higher Support score (7/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Analytics score (6/10 vs 4/10)
Pros & Cons
HHetzner Cloud
Pros
- EU servers include 20 TB of traffic, and extra traffic costs only €1 per TB.
- Hourly billing capped at a monthly price, with no contracts.
- A full API and CLI plus Terraform and Ansible integrations make automation straightforward.
- Stateful firewalls and private networks come at no extra cost.
- Still cheaper per spec than DigitalOcean in independent 2026 comparisons.
Cons
- Prices rose twice in 2026, with CPX and CCX new orders up by as much as about 176%.
- Cost-Optimized types are listed as unavailable, and provisioning was limited for new customers from June 2026.
- Many users report account verification failures and suspensions with little explanation.
- No managed database, serverless or managed Kubernetes products.
- US and Singapore servers include far less traffic than EU servers.
Northflank
Pros
- Per-second usage billing with no seat or workspace fees. Northflank's own comparison prices a 2 vCPU, 4 GB service at $48 a month, against $85 at Render.
- The same platform can run workloads in your own AWS, GCP, Azure or Civo account, or on imported Kubernetes clusters, so moving off the managed cloud does not mean switching tools.
- G2 reviewers praise fast support from engineers who know the product.
- Builds from GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket are built in, and preview environments are created for each pull request.
- GPU options run from L4 to B200, so AI workloads can sit next to ordinary services.
Cons
- SLAs, SSO, SCIM, audit logs and the WAF are only available on Enterprise.
- G2 reviewers mention a limited choice of regions and slow builds because local Docker caching is missing.
- Some Trustpilot reviewers report slow support, and the review base is small overall.
- The vendor's pricing and features pages carry a notice about a security incident and ask users to rotate their credentials.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Northflank scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.2/10 against 6.2/10 for Hetzner Cloud. The largest gap is in Support: 4/10 for Hetzner Cloud and 7/10 for Northflank.
Northflank has a free plan; Hetzner Cloud does not list one.
