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Is Hetzner’s 30% Cloud Price Increase Justified, or Are Customers Paying for the AI Gold Rush?
What Is Actually Happening
Hetzner, one of Europe’s most well-regarded value hosting providers, has officially confirmed price increases across its cloud, dedicated server, storage, and load balancer products, effective April 1, 2026 — and no, that date is not a joke. This is, notably, the second price adjustment Hetzner has made this month alone; setup fees were already raised on February 2 due to what the company called “exceptionally high purchase prices for hardware components”.
The scale of the increases is hard to ignore. Cloud server prices in Germany and Finland are climbing between 30% and 37% depending on the tier. As a reference point, the entry-level CX23 instance moves from €2.99 to €3.99 per month, while GPU server pricing on the GEX44 jumps from €182.30 to €212.30. Object storage base pricing rises from €4.99 to €6.49 per month — roughly a 30% increase. Dedicated servers see a smaller, though still meaningful, uptick; the popular EX44 climbs from €42.30 to €47.30 per month.
The AI-Driven Hardware Crunch
The root cause is not isolated to Hetzner. DRAM prices surged approximately 171% year-over-year through 2025, driven almost entirely by AI infrastructure buildout consuming high-bandwidth memory and squeezing supply of commodity DRAM. Samsung raised server memory contract prices by up to 60% over the same period. Dell executives publicly flagged “unprecedented” memory shortages to investors.
The mechanism is straightforward: large AI data centers are absorbing global memory production capacity, and memory manufacturers have responded by shifting output to the far more profitable HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) used in AI GPUs. What remains available for standard cloud and server infrastructure is scarcer and more expensive. OVHcloud separately projected 5–10% price increases of its own for April through September 2026 — though Hetzner’s increases are considerably steeper. Market analysts expect these shortages to persist well into 2027, and potentially beyond.
A Genuine Cost Pass-Through, or an Opportunity Seized?
Hetzner’s official statement says the company “genuinely tried hard to optimize” its costs before announcing the changes. Given that the hardware cost context is well-documented and industry-wide, there is a credible case that some price adjustment was inevitable. What has generated friction in the community is the breadth of the increase — specifically, applying a 30%+ hike to existing customers who run infrastructure that does not require new hardware purchases.
An IT service provider’s concern here is legitimate. When a business commits to Hetzner for managed services, it builds long-term pricing models for clients around that infrastructure cost. A sudden 30% increase breaks those projections and, in some cases, invalidates existing service contracts. Some older contracts reportedly saw increases of only 3–4%, while most landed between 14% and 21%, with some reaching the full 30%+ range. The inconsistency itself adds to the confusion.
Hetzner Still Leads on Value — for Now
Even after these increases, Hetzner remains significantly cheaper than its major competitors. Before this adjustment, comparable instances at DigitalOcean, Linode, or Vultr were priced 3–6× higher, and AWS or Azure instances were in a different pricing tier entirely. The new pricing, while a notable jump, does not eliminate that competitive gap. For small teams, startups, and development workloads, the value proposition holds.
That said, the five-week notice window before April 1 is tight for any business that needs to renegotiate client contracts or evaluate alternatives. The practical advice: audit which of your instances are cloud versus dedicated, since the increases are asymmetric. Dedicate servers face far lower increases (averaging around 3% on auction listings), while cloud instances bear the brunt.
What You Should Do Before April 1
- Audit your active services — identify which products fall under the 30–37% cloud tier versus the lower dedicated server adjustments.
- Recalculate client-facing contracts — if you resell or bundle Hetzner infrastructure, update your pricing models now before the April 1 effective date.
- Compare alternatives with current pricing — providers like OVHcloud, Hetzner’s auction server listings (flat 3% increase), or ARM-based CAX instances may offer better value depending on your workload.
- Consider locking in current pricing — check whether any prepaid or annual billing options are available before the rate change takes effect.
- Monitor the broader market — this is not a Hetzner-specific event. If you migrate to another provider to avoid the increase, expect similar adjustments industry-wide as the hardware cost wave continues through 2026 and into 2027.
The core question — whether this is a fair cost pass-through or an opportunistic adjustment — likely has elements of both. The hardware cost pressures are real and well-documented. How broadly and uniformly those costs are applied to existing customers is where the reasonable criticism sits. Planning ahead rather than reacting after April 1 is the most productive path forward.