Compare / Unkey vs Hetzner Cloud

Unkey vs Hetzner Cloud

Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — Unkey checked 2026-08-06, Hetzner Cloud checked 2026-08-06.

The short version

Unkey and Hetzner Cloud split our comparison — the right pick depends on what your project values.

Price Hetzner Cloud

Hetzner Cloud is cheaper at most of the stages we model.

Ease Unkey

Unkey is easier to get running: connect GitHub for automatic builds and branch previews, or deploy a Docker image from the Unkey CLI.

Control Hetzner Cloud

Hetzner Cloud gives you more control over the stack — the flip side of the convenience trade.

Features Unkey

Unkey comes out ahead on 6 of the 15 features we track, versus 2.

What developers say about this matchup

We couldn't find a substantive first-person discussion comparing this exact pair. We leave the section empty instead of filling it with vendor marketing or generic SEO comparisons.

At a glance

Unkey Hetzner Cloud
Best for Production APIs that want hosting, gateway policies, API keys, rate limits, and request analytics in one place. European projects that need serious compute or move a lot of traffic.
How deploys work Connect GitHub for automatic builds and branch previews, or deploy a Docker image from the Unkey CLI. You get root on a bare server: bring your own setup, or use one-click apps like Docker and WordPress.
The tradeoff It is a young, API-specific platform with metered billing, ephemeral storage, and no managed database. Self-managed like any VPS, and the bandwidth advantage mostly applies to EU locations.
Free tier None None

What you'd realistically pay

$5 €5.99 $18 €8.99 $50 €43.49 Just starting Steady traffic Growing
Unkey Hetzner Cloud
Estimated monthly cost at each project stage. Estimates use each provider's real plans; euro prices are compared at a rough exchange rate.
Project stage Unkey Hetzner Cloud Cheaper
Just starting ≈$5/mo Starter — The $5 minimum includes $5 of usage, enough for a small, lightly used API. ≈€5.99/mo CX23 (EU) — €5.49 + €0.50 IPv4. 2 shared vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB SSD, 20 TB traffic. Germany and Finland only. Unkey
Steady traffic ≈$18/mo Starter + usage — About 0.5 active vCPU and 1 GB of memory running continuously before egress or active-key charges. ≈€8.99/mo CX33 (EU) — €8.49 + €0.50 IPv4. 4 shared vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 80 GB SSD, 20 TB traffic. Hetzner Cloud
Growing ≈$50/mo Business — The $50 minimum becomes usage credit and raises per-instance limits to 16 vCPU and 32 GB of RAM. ≈€43.49/mo CCX13 (EU) — €42.99 + €0.50 IPv4. 2 dedicated vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 80 GB NVMe — move to dedicated CPUs when shared bursting stops being enough. ≈ Tie

Unkey pricing notes

  • Usage rates are $0.000006944 per vCPU-second, $0.000003472 per GB-second of memory, $0.00000006 per GB-second of ephemeral disk, and $0.05 per GB of egress.
  • API-key authentication through the gateway adds $0.002 per active key each month. The plan minimum is included usage credit rather than an extra charge on top.
  • Log retention is 3 days on Starter, 7 days on Pro, and 14 days on Business.

Hetzner Cloud pricing notes

  • Traffic overage costs €1/TB in the EU — most providers charge 10–100x that per GB.
  • Billed hourly up to a monthly cap.
  • The Arm-based CAX plans match CX specs at similar prices if the Intel CX line is out of stock.

Our ratings

Ease of use Unkey

Unkey 4/5
Hetzner Cloud 2/5

Pricing clarity Hetzner Cloud

Unkey 4/5
Hetzner Cloud 5/5

Free tier

Unkey 1/5
Hetzner Cloud 1/5

Scaling Unkey

Unkey 5/5
Hetzner Cloud 2/5

Control Hetzner Cloud

Unkey 3/5
Hetzner Cloud 5/5

Feature by feature

Unkey wins 6, Hetzner Cloud wins 2, with 7 even.

Deploy workflow

Unkey Hetzner Cloud
Deploy from Git push Yes Connect GitHub; pushes to the default branch deploy production automatically. No No deploy pipeline — bring your own CI or scripts.
Preview deploys Yes Non-default branches and pull requests receive isolated preview deployments. No Nothing built in.
Official CLI Yes The Unkey CLI deploys local build contexts or pre-built container images. Yes hcloud CLI manages servers, networks, and snapshots.
Instant rollbacks Yes Rollbacks atomically switch traffic to a previous immutable deployment. Partial Snapshots and paid backups restore machines; no deploy-level rollback.

Platform

Unkey Hetzner Cloud
Custom domains + HTTPS Yes Custom apex domains and subdomains include automatic TLS; plan limits apply. Yes Point DNS at the server; TLS is yours via certbot or a proxy.
Built-in CDN / edge network No The global gateway routes API traffic but is not a static-asset caching CDN. No No CDN product — put Cloudflare in front if needed.
Serverless functions No Applications run as container instances rather than per-request functions. No Not a VPS feature.
Docker containers Yes Build from a Dockerfile or deploy a pre-built image from a registry. Yes Docker CE one-click app or install it yourself.
SSH / shell access No The documented workflow exposes logs and metrics, not an interactive SSH shell. Yes Full root SSH.
EU hosting region Yes European deployment regions are available; Starter includes three regions and paid upgrades unlock all. Yes Germany and Finland are the home turf — this is where the value is.

Runtime & operations

Unkey Hetzner Cloud
Automatic scaling Yes Horizontal autoscaling adjusts instance count from configured minimums and maximums based on CPU load. No Manual resizing or manual fleet management.
Scale to zero Partial Preview environments sleep automatically when idle; apps can also be stopped and started manually. No Servers bill until deleted, even powered off.
Scheduled jobs No There is no documented first-class scheduler for cron jobs. Yes Classic cron on the box.
Managed database No No managed database is included; connect an external database service. No No managed database product — self-host or go external.
Logs & metrics built in Yes Runtime logs, CPU and memory metrics, request analytics, and gateway decisions appear in the dashboard. Partial Basic server graphs in the console; app-level monitoring is yours.

Watch out for

Unkey

  • Unkey only launched public app hosting in 2026, so its production track record is much shorter than established platforms such as Heroku, Render, or Railway.
  • The monthly plan price is a minimum with matching usage credit, not a compute bundle: CPU, memory, ephemeral disk, egress, and active keys are metered separately.
  • Storage is ephemeral and there is no managed database, so persistent data must live with another provider.

Hetzner Cloud

  • Hetzner raised prices on 15 June 2026: dedicated CCX and shared CPX plans roughly tripled, while the budget CX line rose about 35%.
  • The cheap CX plans are sold in Germany and Finland only, in limited capacity — Hetzner sometimes pauses sales when stock runs out.
  • US locations include only 1–2 TB of traffic versus 20 TB in the EU — the famous value is a European value.
  • A public IPv4 address costs €0.50/month extra; only IPv6 is free.
  • Servers bill until deleted, even while powered off.

Read the full reviews: Unkey and Hetzner Cloud. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.