UpCloud vs Hetzner 2026: Premium Performance vs Budget Value

UpCloud vs Hetzner 2026: Premium Performance vs Budget Value

UpCloud and Hetzner couldn’t be more different: UpCloud is a premium Finnish cloud provider offering top-tier performance with a 100% uptime SLA, while Hetzner is a German budget king delivering incredible value per dollar.

Which approach is right for you? Let’s dive in.

Quick Summary

Aspect	UpCloud	Hetzner
Starting price	~€5-6/month	€4.24/month
Entry-level specs	1 vCPU, 1GB RAM	2 vCPU, 4GB RAM
Value per USD	Good (premium)	Exceptional (3-4x better)
Performance tier	Premium	Budget
Uptime SLA	100%	99.9%
Max IOPS	100,000+	~3,000-10,000
Storage	MaxIOPS NVMe	Standard SSD
Data centers	12 locations	5 locations
Developer experience	Very good	Basic
Best for	Performance-critical	Budget-conscious

Bottom line: Hetzner wins on value (3-4x specs per dollar), UpCloud wins on performance and guarantees.

Detailed Pricing Comparison

UpCloud Pricing Structure

General Purpose Plans:

Plan	vCPU	RAM	Storage	Max IOPS	Price (USD est.)
1xCPU-1GB	1	1GB	25GB NVMe	100,000	~€5-6/mo
2xCPU-2GB	2	2GB	50GB NVMe	100,000	~€10-12/mo
4xCPU-4GB	4	4GB	80GB NVMe	100,000	~€20-24/mo
8xCPU-8GB	8	8GB	160GB NVMe	100,000	~€40-48/mo
12xCPU-16GB	12	16GB	320GB NVMe	100,000	~€80-96/mo

UpCloud pricing notes:

• Prices in EUR
• Hourly billing available
• MaxIOPS storage on all plans
• 100% uptime SLA
• Premium positioning

Hetzner Pricing Structure

Plan	vCPU	RAM	Storage	Transfer	Price (USD est.)
CX11	2	4GB	20GB SSD	20TB	~€4.24/mo
CX21	3	8GB	40GB SSD	20TB	~€9.16/mo
CX31	4	16GB	80GB SSD	20TB	~€18.82/mo
CX41	8	32GB	160GB SSD	20TB	~€37.65/mo
CX51	12	64GB	240GB SSD	20TB	~€75.29/mo

Hetzner pricing notes:

• Prices in EUR
• Monthly only (no hourly)
• 20TB transfer on all plans
• Setup fee: €1 for new accounts

Value Comparison at ~€10/month

UpCloud 2xCPU-2GB:

• 2 vCPU
• 2GB RAM
• 50GB MaxIOPS NVMe
• 100,000 max IOPS
• ~€10-12/month

Hetzner CX21:

• 3 vCPU
• 8GB RAM
• 40GB SSD
• 20TB transfer
• ~€9.16/month

Hetzner gives you 4x the RAM and more CPU for the same price!

Value Comparison at ~€20/month

UpCloud 4xCPU-4GB:

• 4 vCPU
• 4GB RAM
• 80GB MaxIOPS NVMe
• 100,000 max IOPS
• ~€20-24/month

Hetzner CX31:

• 4 vCPU
• 16GB RAM
• 80GB SSD
• 20TB transfer
• ~€18.82/month

Hetzner offers 4x the RAM for the same price with similar CPU!

Pricing winner: Hetzner (by far) - 3-4x better value per dollar.

Performance Comparison

UpCloud Performance

Strengths:

• MaxIOPS storage (100,000 IOPS guaranteed)
• 100% uptime SLA (money back for downtime)
• Enterprise-grade infrastructure
• Consistent high performance
• Low latency storage
• Premium network

Benchmarks:

• Storage: 100,000+ IOPS (MaxIOPS)
• Network: 1Gbps+ port speeds
• CPU: High-performance cores
• Very consistent performance

Best for:

• Databases needing high IOPS
• Performance-critical applications
• Production business apps
• High-traffic websites
• Applications requiring 100% uptime

Hetzner Performance

Strengths:

• Good performance for the price
• More CPU cores and RAM
• Solid network quality
• Fast deployment
• Good multi-core performance

Considerations:

• Shared infrastructure (higher density)
• Performance can vary by host load
• Lower IOPS than UpCloud
• Less consistent performance
• No 100% SLA

Benchmarks:

• Storage: ~3,000-10,000 IOPS (standard SSD)
• Network: Good (up to 1Gbps)
• CPU: Varies by host load
• Good value but less consistent

Performance winner: UpCloud (by far) - You get what you pay for.

The IOPS difference is massive:

• UpCloud: 100,000 IOPS
• Hetzner: ~3,000-10,000 IOPS
• UpCloud is 10-30x faster for I/O-intensive workloads!

When Performance Matters

UpCloud excels at:

Database workloads:

• High IOPS = faster queries
• Consistent latency
• Better for OLTP databases
• Perfect for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB

I/O-intensive applications:

• File servers
• Search engines (Elasticsearch)
• Big data processing
• Analytics platforms

High-traffic websites:

• Consistent performance under load
• Better caching performance
• Faster database queries

Hetzner excels at:

CPU-intensive tasks:

• More CPU cores per dollar
• Good for batch processing
• Parallel workloads
• Video encoding

Memory-intensive applications:

• More RAM for the price
• In-memory caching
• Data applications
• Application servers

Data Center Locations

UpCloud Data Centers (12 locations)

Europe:

• Finland (Helsinki, 2 locations)
• Germany (Frankfurt)
• Netherlands (Amsterdam)
• UK (London)
• Spain (Madrid)
• Poland (Warsaw)
• France (Paris)
• Sweden (Stockholm)

North America:

• USA (Chicago)
• USA (New York)
• USA (San Jose)

Asia-Pacific:

• Singapore

Coverage: Strong European presence, strategic US/Asia

Hetzner Data Centers (5 locations)

Germany:

• Falkenstein (Nuremberg region)
• Nuremberg
• Helsinki (Finland)

USA:

• Hillsboro (Oregon)
• Asheboro (North Carolina)

Asia:

• Singapore

Data center winner: UpCloud (12 vs 5) - Much better coverage.

Features and Developer Experience

UpCloud Features

Strengths:

• MaxIOPS storage (major differentiator)
• 100% uptime SLA
• Hourly billing
• Excellent API
• Good documentation
• Managed databases
• Object storage
• Load balancers

Unique:

• MaxIOPS guaranteed IOPS performance
• 100% SLA (money back for downtime)
• Private network capabilities
• Floating IPs

Developer tools:

• Official CLI (upctl)
• Good API documentation
• Multiple integration options
• Server tagging and organization

Weaknesses:

• More expensive
• Premium pricing may not fit all budgets

Hetzner Features

Strengths:

• Very generous bandwidth (20TB)
• Fast deployment
• DDoS protection
• Rescue system
• Snapshot backups
• Good value features

Unique:

• Server auction (cheaper surplus)
• Dedicated servers (easy upgrade)
• Colocation options

Developer tools:

• Basic but functional API
• Standard control panel
• No official CLI
• Manual processes

Weaknesses:

• Basic interface
• Limited documentation
• Fewer cloud-native features

Features winner: UpCloud - More professional features and tools.

Support and Reliability

UpCloud

Support:

• 24/7 support (all plans)
• Ticket-based
• Response time: Fast
• Good documentation
• Professional support team

SLA:

• 100% uptime SLA
• Money back for downtime
• Proven track record

Hetzner

Support:

• Ticket-based (can be slower)
• Documentation available
• German/English support
• Community forum

SLA:

• 99.9% uptime
• Less formal guarantees

Support winner: UpCloud - Better SLA and support.

Use Case Recommendations

Choose UpCloud If:

• Performance is critical
• You need high IOPS (databases)
• You want 100% uptime SLA
• You’re running production business apps
• You need consistent performance
• You want enterprise features
• You need hourly billing
• Budget is not the main concern

Ideal for:

• Production databases
• High-traffic websites
• E-commerce platforms
• Business-critical applications
• Performance-sensitive workloads
• Enterprise deployments
• Applications requiring 100% uptime

Choose Hetzner If:

• Budget is your top priority
• You need lots of RAM (databases, caching)
• You’re in Europe (good latency)
• You want generous bandwidth
• You’re comfortable with Linux
• You don’t need 100% uptime SLA
• You want maximum specs per dollar

Ideal for:

• Databases (high RAM helps)
• European projects
• Budget-conscious production
• Development environments
• High-memory applications
• Storage-heavy workloads
• Personal projects

Performance by Use Case

Databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB)

Winner: UpCloud (for IOPS) or Hetzner (for RAM)

UpCloud:

• 100,000 IOPS = faster queries
• Consistent performance
• Better for OLTP workloads

Hetzner:

• More RAM = better caching
• Good for read-heavy databases
• Excellent value

Recommendation: UpCloud for high-traffic/transactional, Hetzner for read-heavy/cached workloads

High-Traffic Websites

Winner: UpCloud

Why:

• Consistent performance under load
• High IOPS for caching
• 100% SLA
• Better for production

Application Servers

Winner: Tie

UpCloud: Better single-core performance Hetzner: More cores for parallel processing

Microservices

Winner: UpCloud

Why:

• Hourly billing (easier scaling)
• Better infrastructure
• More reliable
• 100% SLA

Development/Staging

Winner: Hetzner

Why:

• Much cheaper
• Performance matters less
• More resources for testing

Big Data/Analytics

Winner: UpCloud (for IOPS) or Hetzner (for CPU/RAM)

UpCloud: Better for I/O-intensive processing Hetzner: Better for CPU/memory-intensive tasks

The Cost of Downtime

UpCloud’s 100% SLA is valuable:

Example business scenario:

• E-commerce site making $1000/day
• 1 hour downtime = $42 loss
• 99.9% uptime = 8.7 hours downtime/year
• 100% uptime = 0 hours downtime/year

UpCloud SLA value:

• Pays you for downtime
• Better for revenue-generating sites
• Insurance for business continuity

Hetzner:

• No compensation for typical downtime
• Good for non-revenue-critical apps
• Acceptable for development/testing

The Hybrid Strategy

Use both strategically:

UpCloud for:

• Production databases (high IOPS)
• Revenue-generating applications
• High-traffic sites
• Business-critical services
• Performance-sensitive workloads

Hetzner for:

• Development/staging environments
• Non-critical applications
• Testing and experimentation
• Backup servers
• Cost-effective scaling

How to Compare Plans

Use our tools:

1. VPS Finder - Filter by budget
2. Performance page - Compare specs and benchmarks
3. Compare tool - Side-by-side comparison

Example Comparison

Compare these plans:

• UpCloud 4xCPU-4GB - ~€20-24/mo, 4 vCPU, 4GB RAM, MaxIOPS storage
• Hetzner CAX31 - ~€12.49/mo, 8 vCPU, 16GB RAM, 160GB NVMe

Hetzner offers 4x the RAM, UpCloud offers 10x the IOPS performance.

Conclusion

UpCloud and Hetzner excel in completely different areas:

Choose UpCloud for:

• Premium performance (100,000 IOPS)
• 100% uptime SLA
• Production reliability
• High IOPS workloads
• Business-critical apps
• Enterprise features
• Hourly billing

Choose Hetzner for:

• Maximum value per dollar
• High RAM requirements
• European deployments
• Budget-conscious projects
• Development environments
• Non-critical production
• Generous bandwidth

The Verdict

For performance-critical and business applications: UpCloud justifies its premium pricing with the 100% SLA and MaxIOPS storage.

For budget-conscious projects and development: Hetzner offers incredible value that’s hard to beat.

Bottom line:

• Performance/Production/Business → UpCloud (you get what you pay for)
• Budget/Development/Testing → Hetzner (amazing value)
• Best strategy → UpCloud for production, Hetzner for development

Important: If your application generates revenue, UpCloud’s 100% SLA alone can be worth the premium.

Ready to decide? Use our VPS Finder to compare UpCloud and Hetzner plans based on your requirements.

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Data note: All prices in EUR, converted to USD. UpCloud and Hetzner prices change. Check current pricing on their websites.

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