AWS vs. Hetzner in 60 Seconds: Compute Is Rarely the Problem

AWS vs. Hetzner in 60 seconds: Compute is rarely the problem – egress is.

Setup

For comparability: 24/7 (~730 h/month), Small/Medium/Large (2/4/8 vCPU with 4/16/32 GB RAM).

• AWS examples: t3.medium, m6i.xlarge, m6i.2xlarge
• Hetzner: CX22, CCX23, CCX33

🔹 Compute Only (1 VM/Node, 24/7)

🔹 “Mini K8s” (1 Cluster + 2 Workers, Medium)

• AWS EKS: 2×$140 + $73 ≈ $353/month (compute-only)
• Hetzner: 2×€24.49 ≈ €48.98/month

🔹 The Real Punch: Traffic/Egress

• AWS: roughly $0.09/GB → 1 TB ≈ $92, 10 TB ≈ $922, 25 TB ≈ $2,304
• Hetzner EU: 20 TB included, then ~€1/TB → at 25 TB: ~€5 extra

Kubernetes Is Not Just “EKS or Nothing”

And yes: On affordable VMs, it’s often surprisingly quick to set up – e.g., with k3s or RKE2. And if you don’t need “full K8s” at all, you can use the cloud API to build many simple solutions even more directly (provisioning, scaling, automation) – without taking on the full Kubernetes overhead.

Still: Kubernetes remains… somehow always sexy. 😄