Hetzner price increase June 2026: CPX and CCX up to +176% - our take

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For many - us included - Hetzner was the obvious answer to expensive hyperscalers for years: cheap, solid, operated in the EU. That is exactly why we have to call the latest pricing round what it is. On June 15, 2026, Hetzner raises cloud prices again, and for the dedicated-vCPU lines CPX and CCX it goes up by as much as 176%. That is no longer fine-tuning; it shifts the math.

A large part of our offering - from migration to operations - is built around Hetzner. And precisely for that reason we say it openly: with this round, Hetzner is no longer automatically the price/performance first choice for a number of workloads - and we are now looking harder at European alternatives.

Table of Contents

• What changes on June 15, 2026
• As of October 2026: availability and images
• Why prices are rising
• Our critical take
• European alternatives on our radar
• What Hetzner customers should do now
• Conclusion

What changes on June 15, 2026

It is already the second pricing round of 2026. Back on April 1 there was a broader adjustment of up to 37% that also hit existing customers. The June 15 round now targets the more powerful cloud lines - and according to Hetzner it applies only to new orders and rescales; existing servers keep their terms.

The magnitude (Germany/Finland, EUR/month) per Hetzner's own price adjustment docs:

In short: the cheap cost-optimized lines (CX/CAX) rise moderately (around 33-38%). The dedicated-vCPU lines CPX (around +144-176%) and CCX (around +113-169%) jump dramatically.

The dedicated root servers change too

In parallel, Hetzner reorganizes its dedicated portfolio: every model gets a -1/-2/-3 suffix, plus a new "-1-Ltd" line (Limited, limited quantity built from hardware that could be sourced more cheaply, at attractive conditions). The one-time setup fees drop significantly for most dedicated servers - instead, that cost is folded into a higher monthly rate. For new orders, dedicated servers do get more expensive, but more moderately than cloud CPX/CCX; industry reports point to manageable increases, around a fifth for some series. Existing dedicated contracts keep their terms; the change applies only to new orders. Hetzner lists the concrete per-model prices in its pricing docs.

Worth knowing for cost savers: the Server Auction (used hardware) is exempt from the adjustment and often remains the cheapest way to get your own hardware. How cloud and dedicated prices compare per vCPU and GB of RAM after the adjustment is shown in Hetzner Cloud vs. dedicated server.

As of October 2026: availability and images

Since the June round, the situation has changed less in price than in availability (as of 1 October 2026):

Hetzner attributes the restriction to continuing high demand and the limited availability of required hardware components; according to the status notice, individual requests cannot be prioritised.

For planning, this means:

• The cheapest tariff is only a price anchor as long as it cannot be ordered. A calculation that assumes new CX or CAX servers cannot be implemented at the moment. For new workloads, the orderable classes are what counts.
• Do not delete existing servers lightly. Rebuilding in the same class is not assured right now.
• Check your automation. Terraform, Ansible or cloud-init templates using debian-11 break for new servers after 30 November 2026. Scripts that read the API field deprecated need to switch to deprecation by 2 November.

Why prices are rising

Hetzner officially cites "dramatically increased costs to operate infrastructure and to buy new hardware". That is not a pretext: the memory market is under massive pressure. AI demand has driven DRAM prices up sharply (market reports cite around +171% year over year), and NVMe SSDs also got significantly more expensive. Whoever sells a lot of RAM per core - exactly what CPX and CCX do - feels this shock most directly.

So the trigger is an external market shock, not a simple miscalculation. That matters for a fair assessment - but it does not excuse every decision.

Our critical take

Three things bother us:

1. Magnitude and pace. Two increases in about ten weeks, and in June jumps of over 170% in a single step - that is brutal for any TCO planning. Predictability was one of the very reasons Hetzner became so popular.

2. Too little buffer in the rock-bottom price. That a DRAM shock hits CPX/CCX this hard shows how thin the margin of these aggressive prices was. Being ultra-cheap is a strength - but without a buffer for input-cost volatility it becomes a risk the customer ends up carrying.

3. The "always 4x cheaper" reflex no longer holds across the board. For cost-optimized (CX/CAX), Hetzner stays very cheap - the lead over DigitalOcean or AWS Lightsail is still roughly 3-4x. For CPX and CCX that lead shrinks substantially, removing a central selling point for an entire product range.

We say this as advocates: our migration offerings have targeted Hetzner for years, and for many cases that remains right. But we must not recommend a solution out of habit when it is no longer the best one for a customer's specific workload.

European alternatives on our radar

The good news: sovereignty does not mean "Hetzner or hyperscaler". There are several serious European providers we evaluate depending on the workload:

• OVHcloud (France) and Scaleway (France) - broad cloud portfolios, EU data centers.
• IONOS and STACKIT (Germany) - STACKIT runs exclusively in Germany, interesting for strict compliance.
• netcup and Contabo (Germany) - often excellent price/performance on vCPU servers.
• Open Telekom Cloud (T-Systems) - for regulated industries.

And, importantly: owned hardware or dedicated root servers (e.g. with Proxmox as a private-cloud base) are often the most economical answer for stable, RAM-heavy workloads - especially now that Hetzner has lowered dedicated setup fees. Instead of expensive dedicated-vCPU cloud, a dedicated server with your own virtualization can be far cheaper per unit of performance. If you do not want to rent and operate the server yourself, Managed Proxmox Hosting provides it including operations by WZ-IT.

What stays true: these are all EU-sovereign options. This is not a return to AWS or Azure, but about the best price/performance within sovereignty.

What Hetzner customers should do now

• Recalculate TCO per workload. Drop blanket assumptions and put the specific server up against alternatives.
• Question the instance class. Do you really need dedicated vCPU (CPX/CCX)? Cost-optimized (CX/CAX) would be the cheaper class but currently cannot be ordered (as of October 2026).
• Check dedicated root servers. Often the best price/performance for stable loads, now with lower setup fees.
• Keep existing servers deliberately. Existing servers keep their prices - a premature rescale takes the new tariff.
• Think multi-provider. Don't put everything on one provider, so the next pricing round doesn't catch you cold again.

Still unsure which route fits? The orientation workshop sorts out your requirements and delivers a prioritised topic list with a recommendation per topic. From €1,490 excl. VAT, remote.

Our approach at WZ-IT

We run infrastructure for customers across providers and vendor-neutrally. In practice: we take in your workloads, calculate TCO across Hetzner, European alternatives and owned hardware, recommend the most economical sovereign option - and run it as Managed Operations with monitoring, updates and SLA. Hetzner remains a strong option, just not the only one.

Further guides

• Cut cloud costs: AWS EC2 and RDS to Hetzner - why the comparison pays off.
• Migrate AWS RDS/Aurora PostgreSQL to Hetzner - a concrete migration path.
• Proxmox & private cloud - owned hardware as an alternative to expensive cloud.
• Cloud architecture & migration - planning provider choice and moves.
• Managed operations for Hetzner - operating existing Hetzner servers in your own account.

Conclusion

The June 15, 2026 round is a turning point: for CPX and CCX, Hetzner's price advantage is largely spent, and two increases in ten weeks cost trust in predictability. The trigger - the DRAM shock - is real, but it also shows how little buffer was in the rock-bottom prices.

For us this does not mean "away from Hetzner", but honestly calculating per workload. For cost-optimized and many dedicated setups, Hetzner stays strong. For dedicated vCPU, a look at European alternatives and owned hardware is more worthwhile than ever.

Unsure what your servers cost now - and where they run best? We calculate it vendor-neutrally and operate the sovereign solution. Arrange a consultation now.

Sources

• Hetzner Docs: price adjustment (tables)
• Hetzner Pressroom: statement on price adjustment (April 1, 2026)
• Hetzner Pressroom: standardization & price adjustment of server products (June 15, 2026)
• Hetzner Cloud: product page with availability status (as of 1 October 2026)
• Hetzner Status: limited availability of cloud instances (since 26 June 2026)
• Hetzner Cloud changelog: Debian 11 deprecated, field deprecated removed
• bex.co: Hetzner's cheap tier is unavailable (25 September 2026)
• Tom's Hardware: Hetzner hikes prices up to 37% from April 1
• igor'sLAB: Hetzner to significantly increase prices from April 2026