Hetzner raised prices twice in 2026 and its whole Cost-Optimized line is unavailable. Compare free-tier alternatives: DigitalOcean, Oracle Cloud, Render, Railway, Fly.io, Cloudflare Workers, Google Cloud.

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Hetzner Alternatives After April 2026 Price Increase

Hetzner raised cloud and dedicated server prices twice in 2026, driven by surging DRAM costs (+171% YoY) from AI infrastructure demand. The April 1 round applied to all regions and all customers; the June 15 round applies to new orders and rescales only, and renamed the lineup. All 8 Cost-Optimized plans are now listed as not available, so the cheapest plan you can order is CPX12 at €11.99/mo (1 vCPU, 2 GB), read from hetzner.com on 2026-09-04. See our full pricing analysis.

If you're looking for budget-friendly alternatives with generous free tiers or credits, here are the best options across VPS/cloud providers, managed platforms, and serverless offerings.

Pricing Restructured

Cloud & dedicated server prices increasing 30-50%. Entry-level CX23: €2.99→€3.99/mo (+33%). Applies to new and existing customers. Driven by DRAM (+171% YoY) and NVMe SSD cost surges from AI infrastructure demand. Superseded 2026-06-15: Hetzner ran a second adjustment across all cloud and dedicated lines, applying to new orders and rescales only. Read from hetzner.com on 2026-09-03: CX23 is €5.99 and is marked "not available", as is every other Cost-Optimized plan, and the cheapest orderable plan is CPX12 at €11.99/mo. Source ↗

Before: Lower cloud server pricing across Germany, Finland, US, and Singapore data centers (e.g., CX23 at €2.99/mo)
After: 30-37% increase on cloud servers, up to 50% on select dedicated/storage products. All regions and all customers (new and existing) affected. Announced Feb 23, 2026

Top Alternatives

Render Hobby caution 2026-04-23 restructured

Hobby plan, $0 a month plus compute. Free web services (512 MB RAM, 0.1 CPU) spin down after 15 minutes without traffic, with 750 free instance hours per workspace a month. One free Postgres database (256 MB RAM, 1 GB storage, 30-day expiry) and one free Key Value instance (25 MB, not continuously persisted to disk) per workspace. 5 GB bandwidth/month included then $0.15/GB; without a payment method on file, Render suspends Free services for the rest of the month instead. 500 build minutes/month. Up to 25 services, unlimited projects with 2 environments each. Pro is $25 a month plus compute.

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Cloudflare Workers Free stable

Edge compute with 100K requests/day, 10ms CPU time per invocation, 5 cron triggers/account. KV: 1 GB storage, 100K reads/day, 1K writes/day. D1: 5 GB storage, 5M rows read/day, 100K rows written/day. R2 (Standard storage): 10 GB-month/month, 1M Class A ops/month, 10M Class B ops/month. Durable Objects (SQLite-backed only): 100K requests/day. Queues: 10K operations/day. Vectorize: 30M queried vector dimensions/month, 5M stored vector dimensions. Dynamic Workers are paid only. US students 18+ with a verified .edu billing email: Workers Paid (10M requests/month), $5/mo fee waived for 12 months.

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Railway Free stable

Free $0 per month. Start with a 30-day free trial with $5 credits, then $1 per month. Up to 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB RAM per service. 0.5 GB of volume storage. 2 replicas during the free trial, then 1. Projects: 5 during trial, then 1

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🔗 $20 in Railway credits (disclosure)
Fly.io Legacy Free

Pay-as-you-go only — no free tier for new accounts (since Oct 2024). Legacy accounts (Hobby/Launch/Scale plans) retain: 3 shared-cpu-1x VMs (256 MB RAM), 3 GB volume storage, 100 GB transfer/month. Volume snapshots: first 10 GB free, then $0.08/GB/month.

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DigitalOcean Credits caution 2026-04-07 reduced

New accounts get a $5 signup credit, applied automatically to the first team and expiring 90 days after signup; a payment method is required before creating resources. Basic Droplets from $4/mo (1 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 10 GB SSD). Per-second billing (min 60s or $0.01). App Platform: 3 free static sites (1 GiB outbound/mo each). Functions: 90,000 GiB-seconds/mo free. Spaces: 250 GB + 1 TB transfer for $5/mo. Managed databases start at $15/mo (not free). No perpetual free compute tier

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DigitalOcean Hatch

DigitalOcean Startups: credits for 12 months in an amount that varies by startup, usable up to $10,000 a month; use beyond that in a month is charged. Since 2026-05-13 the credits exclude GPU Droplets, NVIDIA H100 GPU Kubernetes, Bare Metal GPUs, Dedicated and Serverless Inference, third-party AI models, Paperspace Machines and Cloudways. GPU credits are a separate benefit for selected startups. 15 months of free Standard-tier support. For startups that have raised $10M or less and have not used DigitalOcean credits before; AI-native startups are prioritised and service businesses are not eligible.

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Oracle Cloud Always Free stable

Always Free includes 2 AMD VMs (1/8 OCPU, 1 GB each), Arm Ampere A1 at 2 OCPUs and 12 GB total across 1-2 VMs, 200 GB block volumes, 20 GB object storage, 2 Autonomous Databases, Load Balancer

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Google Cloud Startup Program

Scale: up to $200,000 over 2 years for equity-funded startups. Scale AI: up to $350,000 over 2 years ($250K Y1 + $100K Y2) for AI-first startups (pre-seed to Series A). Includes $10K Model Garden credits, $12K support credits, Google Workspace, and dedicated Startup Success Manager

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Google Cloud Run Always Free

Always Free: 2M requests/month, 360K GB-seconds memory, 180K vCPU-seconds compute, 1 GB North America egress. Fully managed serverless containersWhen we last read the page we cite for this offer, on 2026-09-22, we found a change we could not reconcile with the terms we publish, so we cannot confirm these terms today.

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Google Compute Engine Always Free stable

Always Free: 1 non-preemptible e2-micro VM (us-west1, us-central1, or us-east1), 30 GB standard persistent disk, 1 GB North America egress. GPUs/TPUs excluded

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OVHcloud Credits

Public Cloud free trial: €200 credit for 60 days. VPS from €4.49/month ex-VAT without commitment (VPS-1 2027: 2 vCores, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe; €3.81 on 12 months). Discovery instances (d2-2) from ~€5/mo. Object Storage (S3-compatible). Managed Kubernetes (free control plane). 40+ regions across Europe, NA, APAC. From April 2026, OVHcloud raised VPS 2026 list prices 36-49% (VPS-1 €4.49 to €6.49), and Public Cloud, Private Cloud and Bare Metal prices by 9-11% on average for new deployments.

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OVHcloud Paid

Dedicated servers starting from ~€55/mo (Rise line: Intel Xeon, 32 GB RAM, 2×480 GB SSD). Kimsufi budget line discontinued, replaced by Eco range from ~€30/mo. Game line with DDoS protection and high-frequency CPU. Storage line for NAS/backup from ~€40/mo. All include unmetered bandwidth (500 Mbps-1 Gbps depending on range). Post-April 2026: Bare Metal prices increased 9-11% for new deployments

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Quick Comparison

Tool Free Tier Details Stability
Render Hobby Hobby plan, $0 a month plus compute. Free web services (512 MB RAM, 0.1 CPU) spin down after 15 minutes without traffic,... caution
2026-04-23 restructured
Cloudflare Workers Free Edge compute with 100K requests/day, 10ms CPU time per invocation, 5 cron triggers/account. KV: 1 GB storage, 100K reads... stable
Railway Free Free $0 per month. Start with a 30-day free trial with $5 credits, then $1 per month. Up to 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB RAM per serv... stable
Fly.io Legacy Free Pay-as-you-go only — no free tier for new accounts (since Oct 2024). Legacy accounts (Hobby/Launch/Scale plans) retain: ... —
DigitalOcean Credits New accounts get a $5 signup credit, applied automatically to the first team and expiring 90 days after signup; a paymen... caution
2026-04-07 reduced
DigitalOcean Hatch DigitalOcean Startups: credits for 12 months in an amount that varies by startup, usable up to $10,000 a month; use beyo... —
Oracle Cloud Always Free Always Free includes 2 AMD VMs (1/8 OCPU, 1 GB each), Arm Ampere A1 at 2 OCPUs and 12 GB total across 1-2 VMs, 200 GB bl... stable
Google Cloud Startup Program Scale: up to $200,000 over 2 years for equity-funded startups. Scale AI: up to $350,000 over 2 years ($250K Y1 + $100K Y... —
Google Cloud Run Always Free Always Free: 2M requests/month, 360K GB-seconds memory, 180K vCPU-seconds compute, 1 GB North America egress. Fully mana... —
Google Compute Engine Always Free Always Free: 1 non-preemptible e2-micro VM (us-west1, us-central1, or us-east1), 30 GB standard persistent disk, 1 GB No... stable
OVHcloud Credits Public Cloud free trial: €200 credit for 60 days. VPS from €4.49/month ex-VAT without commitment (VPS-1 2027: 2 vCores, ... —
OVHcloud Paid Dedicated servers starting from ~€55/mo (Rise line: Intel Xeon, 32 GB RAM, 2×480 GB SSD). Kimsufi budget line discontinu... —

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