Hetzner vs Contabo: performance, resources and VPS costs
Published on 2026-10-26 by frfrand
Hetzner and Contabo comparison by server load
Hetzner and Contabo are often pitted against each other for CPU, RAM, and price. The useful comparison for a developer is another: how long does your project take to respond and how much work do you need to keep it stable.
I propose a way to compare them that doesn't depend on who has the prettiest marketing: take a real project, note what it has to do, and test it in the appropriate environment. A landing page and a booking platform are two different problems.
Hetzner vs Contabo: the main difference
Hetzner. Hetzner Cloud offers compute instances and resources to set up custom infrastructure.
Contabo. Contabo offers VPS with different combinations of memory, CPU, and storage.
That already marks an important separation. Before looking at the price, check if they are selling you a machine, a panel, a managed service, or a mix of those products. They do not have the same responsibilities.
An example to understand the difference
A booking server can be lightly occupied by CPU and yet take a long time to write a transaction due to storage. If you only look at how much RAM the offer includes, that bottleneck does not appear.
How I would compare them in practice
- Choose the same operating system, stack version, and database size.
- Deploy an identical API and test database in each environment.
- Measure p50 and p95 response time, PostgreSQL queries, CPU, and disk latency.
- Check how backups are performed and what happens when restarting.
- Calculate plan, disks, IP, transfer, and management time under current conditions.
Then test two situations that do not appear in most tutorials: what happens if you restart the process? and what happens if a migration goes wrong?. In both cases you need logs, backups, and a way to recover the application. A platform that deploys quickly but leaves you without diagnostics can complicate your life later.
Decision table
| Question | Hetzner | Contabo |
|---|---|---|
| What you are contracting | Hetzner Cloud offers compute instances and resources to build custom infrastructure | Contabo offers VPS with different combinations of memory, CPU, and storage |
| Where do you manage the code? | Git or compatible tools depending on the product | Git or compatible tools depending on the product |
| How do you protect data? | According to infrastructure and own procedures | According to infrastructure and own procedures |
| Who updates the application? | Your team | Your team |
Mistakes worth avoiding
Don't use benchmarks from different regions or plans to declare a universal winner. Measure your load, close to your users and with equivalent configurations.
There are three other mistakes that repeat in almost all providers: uploading a password to the repository, leaving a database publicly accessible, and testing backups only by checking that a file exists. If the project stores money, reservations, or personal data, those checks are mandatory for responsible operation.
What if you did it in ArduMaker?
ArduMaker competes more in integrated management experience than in an isolated CPU figure: VPS, Git deployments, PostgreSQL, domains, and MCP together. Compare if the setup and operation time is worth it for you.
You can create a VPS, connect GitHub, configure services, associate domains, and work with PostgreSQL or Redis when the project requires it. The panel and MCP help operate infrastructure components, but the application still needs good migrations, access control, backups, and monitoring.
What you gain and what you give up?
The VPS gives you flexibility to have an API and a worker that remain active. The trade-off is that you need to size CPU and RAM, update dependencies, and observe the system. If you prefer to delegate those responsibilities, a more managed platform may have real advantages.
Which one would I choose?
Hetzner or Contabo may be suitable as your own infrastructure, depending on measured performance and resources. ArduMaker is worth evaluating for its integrated project management.
Also consider the second year of the project: who will manage the keys, what happens if a client wants to migrate, what extras cost, and whether another developer can take over the application without depending on a configuration only you know.
Useful resources
To conclude: the good provider is not the one that promises to solve everything. It is the one with whom you can deploy, measure, update, and recover the real project you want to maintain.