Hetzner Cloud vs Contabo

Both are German hosts that rent you a plain Linux VM to set up yourself. Hetzner Cloud bills each server by the hour until you delete it, while Contabo rents each server for at least a month and reaches more parts of the world.

The companies and products

Hetzner Cloud

Hetzner is a German hosting company founded in 1997; Hetzner Cloud rents virtual servers, storage and networking by the hour.

A Hetzner Cloud server is a Linux VM picked from shared vCPU lines (cost-optimized CX and CAX, regular CPX) or dedicated vCPU (CCX), with local NVMe disk, a public IP and up to 20 TB of traffic in the EU. You add volumes, private networks, firewalls and load balancers, and run everything yourself through the Console, the Cloud API, the hcloud CLI or Terraform. It is general infrastructure, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.

Founded: 1997, in Germany
Product: Virtual machines on Hetzner's physical servers, with root and your own OS image
Billing: Hourly with a monthly cap; every started hour is billed, and a server bills until you delete it, even when it is off
Pricing change: New prices for new orders and rescales since 15 June 2026; older servers keep their old price until rescaled
Locations: Falkenstein and Nuremberg (Germany), Helsinki (Finland), Ashburn and Hillsboro (US), Singapore
Stock: The cheapest CX and CAX servers show "This product is currently unavailable. Please check back later."
Certifications: ISO/IEC 27001:2022

Contabo

Contabo is a German hosting company, founded in Munich in 2003, that rents VPS, dedicated-core VDS, GPU and dedicated servers by the month.

A Contabo Cloud VPS is a KVM virtual machine with shared vCPU cores, a fixed RAM allocation, a static IPv4 and root access, which you order, pay for and then manage yourself. It is a VPS host, not a sandbox product: there is no per-second billing, no agent tooling and no managed HTTPS in front of the server. It fits people who want one cheap server that runs all month in a region of their choice.

Founded: 2003, in Munich, Germany (Contabo GmbH)
Isolation: KVM virtual servers; Cloud VPS shares vCPU cores at the hypervisor, Cloud VDS has dedicated cores
Billing: Monthly rent, minimum first term of one month; listed prices assume a 24-month term
Regions: 11 locations in 9 regions: EU, UK, three US sites, Singapore, Japan, India, Australia
Network: 1 static IPv4 and a /64 IPv6 subnet per server
GPUs: GPU VPS with an Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, in Europe and US Central
Provisioning: A few minutes after payment clears; orders can need identity checks

Which use cases each one fits

For each use case, Battleships prices every sandbox provider on the same workload and sorts them from the cheapest monthly bill up. “51st cheapest of 364” means 50 of the other 363 providers run that workload, with every feature it needs, for less. “With limits” means the provider runs it but misses something, so it is listed after every full match. Open a use case for its whole ranking and what each provider misses.

Use case and its workload	Hetzner Cloud: price rank	Contabo: price rank	bochka: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory starts and stops many machines a day, which suits Hetzner's hourly billing better than Contabo's monthly rent, and bochka adds /dev/kvm and per-second billing.	46th of 367, with limits $287 a month	79th of 367, with limits $660 a month	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB	94th of 366, with limits $325 a month	95th of 366, with limits $330 a month	5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month
Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month	156th of 345, with limits $649 a month	159th of 345, with limits $660 a month	186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month
Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Sandboxes for your users need many short-lived machines; Hetzner's hourly billing ranks it 46th against Contabo's 153rd, and bochka ranks 1st with stops that cost nothing.	46th of 361, with limits $314 a month	153rd of 361, with limits $1,980 a month	Cheapest of 361 $209 a month
RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month	104th of 360, with limits $6,490 a month	108th of 360, with limits $6,600 a month	34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month
Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month Agent evals fit Hetzner as priced, while on Contabo every parallel machine is a full month's rent; bochka bills per second and forks a running sandbox.	51st cheapest of 364 $1,010 a month	177th of 364, with limits $1,650 a month	10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month
CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Both run Docker builds on a full VM, but a ten-minute job is a full hour on Hetzner and a full month of rent on Contabo; bochka bills only while the job runs.	83rd cheapest of 377 $788 a month	133rd cheapest of 377 $2,980 a month	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Contabo ranks 1st for one dev box that runs all month thanks to its flat monthly rent; Hetzner Cloud ranks 32nd and bochka 18th.	32nd cheapest of 368 $42 a month	Cheapest of 368 $6.6 a month	18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month
Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Neither ships a desktop: both are headless servers with a VNC console, while bochka streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use.	134th of 369, with limits $320 a month	140th of 369, with limits $330 a month	6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month
Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month	227th of 367, with limits $312 a month	232nd of 367, with limits $330 a month	7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month
Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month	157th of 346, with limits $62 a month	258th of 346, with limits $330 a month	6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month
Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month Mass scraping needs many machines at once, so Hetzner's hourly servers rank 45th against Contabo's 184th.	45th of 338, with limits $1,248 a month	184th of 338, with limits $6,600 a month	71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month
Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month	114th of 360, with limits $52 a month	321st of 360, with limits $1,320 a month	2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month
GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month	Can't run it	Can't run it	Can't run it
macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month	Can't run it	Can't run it	Can't run it

Key features

Feature	Hetzner Cloud	Contabo	bochka
What you get	Hourly cloud VMs, with volumes, private networks, firewalls and load balancers around them	Monthly-rented VPS and VDS servers you set up yourself	A sandbox API for agents, on full VMs
Billing	By the hour, every started hour in full, with a monthly cap; bills until you delete the server	Monthly rent with a minimum first term of one month; listed prices assume a 24-month term	Monthly plan from $20, spent per second on running sandboxes
CPU speed (Node.js build-and-test, 4 vCPU / 8 GB)	8.88 runs/s on a shared CX33; CPX and CCX were not measured	Not measured	26.69 runs/s on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts
Nested virtualization	"Not possible on cloud server"	Not supported on any VPS plan; supported on the Cloud VDS line	/dev/kvm on every machine
Docker, root and systemd	Full VM with root; Docker works	Full root on the VM; you install Docker yourself	Docker, root and systemd ready on every machine
Stopping	A powered-off server bills at the full rate until you delete it	Each server is rented for the month, busy or idle	A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk
Snapshots	Snapshots you take yourself, or daily backups in 7 slots for 20% of the server price	1 to 5 manual snapshot slots by plan, kept 30 days, restored in place; none on Cloud VDS	Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop
Fork	Take a snapshot, then create a new server from it	No fork; custom images upload as ISO or QCOW2	Fork a running sandbox in one call
Desktop and computer use	None built in; a VNC console for admin	Headless server; a VNC console for setup and rescue	60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream
Coding agents	None; you install and drive agents yourself, for example over SSH	None built in; 1-Click images for apps like n8n, Ollama and OpenClaw	Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API
Keeping keys out of the machine	No credentials proxy; secrets go on the server	None; secrets live inside the server	AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register
Reaching the machine	Public IPv4 and IPv6 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a paid load balancer	Static public IPv4 and a /64 IPv6, all ports; domains and TLS are yours to set up	HTTPS URLs with TLS for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP
GPUs and Windows	No GPU servers in Hetzner Cloud	GPU VPS with an Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell; Windows Server as a licensed add-on	No GPUs and no Windows guests; Wine for Windows apps
Regions	Germany and Finland, plus Ashburn, Hillsboro and Singapore	11 locations in the EU, UK, US, Singapore, Japan, India and Australia	EU only: Germany, Finland, France

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	Hetzner Cloud	Contabo	bochka
Full VM (own kernel)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Docker inside	Yes	Yes	Yes
Nested virtualization	No	No	Yes
Root	Yes	Yes	Yes
Systemd	Yes	Yes	Yes
Desktop GUI	No	No	Yes
Browser	No	No	Yes
Computer-use API	No	No	Yes
SSH	Yes	Yes	Yes
Persistent disk	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pause/resume	Yes	No	Yes
Automatic snapshots	No	No	Yes
Fork/clone	Yes	No	Yes
Live fork (no pause)	Yes	No	Yes
Memory fork	No	No	No
Custom image (Docker or snapshot)	Yes	Yes	Yes
≥24 h sessions	Yes	Yes	Yes
Idle auto-stop	No	No	No
Wake on request	No	No	No
HTTPS preview URLs	No	No	Yes
Raw TCP inbound	Yes	Yes	Yes
Public IPv4	Yes	Yes	No
Egress allowlist	Yes	No	No
Secret proxy	No	No	Yes
Secret proxy for any API	No	No	Yes
Preinstalled agents	No	No	Yes
Agent harness API	No	No	Yes
MCP server	No	No	No
GPU	No	Yes	No
Windows	No	Yes	No
Arm64	Yes	No	No
Self-hosting	No	No	No
BYOC	No	No	No
Open source	No	No	No
Scoped API keys	Not published	Not published	Yes
Spend limits	No	Not published	Yes
Usage per sandbox (API)	No	No	Yes
Audit logs	Not published	Not published	No
SSO	No	No	No
SOC 2	No	No	No
HIPAA	No	No	No
EU data residency	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zero data retention	Not published	Not published	Yes

Performance

Hetzner Cloud8.88 runs/s

ContaboNot measured

bochka26.69 runs/s

In StarSling's benchmark at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, bochka did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second on its own hosts. The only Hetzner number comes from a shared CX33 that ran 8.88 runs per second, about a third of bochka's speed; Hetzner's CPX and CCX servers were not measured. Contabo is not in the benchmark, so there is no comparable number for it.

Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Hetzner Cloud measured on: Shared vCPU, Cost-Optimized (CX, Intel/AMD), EU. Contabo has no published run in this suite yet, so there is no like-for-like number to compare.

Pricing in five scenarios

Each bill is priced from the providers' public price lists by the open Battleships engine, with the cheapest plan that runs the scenario.

Scenario	Hetzner Cloud, a month	Contabo, a month	bochka, a month
One coding agent, workdays 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, 8 hours a day, 22 days a month, files kept between days	$3 · Pay-as-you-go (postpaid) · with limits	$7 · Usage account	$20 · $20/mo
One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month	$10 · Pay-as-you-go (postpaid) · with limits	$7 · Usage account	$26 · $20/mo
50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside	$141 · Pay-as-you-go (postpaid) · with limits	$330 · Usage account	$317 · $20/mo × 3 seats
Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once	$312 · Pay-as-you-go (postpaid) · with limits	$1,980 · Usage account · with limits	$200 · $100/mo × 2 seats
1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month	$2,080 · Pay-as-you-go (postpaid) · with limits	$6,600 · Usage account · with limits	$2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits

Hetzner Cloud: Hetzner bills each server by the hour, rounding every started hour up, with a monthly cap, and keeps billing until you delete it, even when it is off. The prices here use the cheapest shared CX servers, which are currently out of stock, plus the public IPv4.

Contabo: Contabo charges a flat monthly rent per server, busy or idle, with a minimum first term of one month and lower rates for longer terms. Each machine you need at the same time costs a full month's rent.

Contabo: You pick a monthly plan from $20, and all of it becomes usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.

Limits in those scenarios

Every Hetzner scenario is priced on the CX line, which Hetzner's site marks as currently unavailable, so none of them fit as priced today, and server limits are raised by a support request reviewed by hand. Contabo publishes no limit on how many servers one account can run, orders can wait on identity checks, and its shared vCPU cores can slow down under heavy load, so 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 jobs at once do not fit. On bochka, concurrency goes from 100 to 2,000 by plan, but start-rate limits mean the 1,000-job burst gets queued even on the top plan.

Scenario	Hetzner Cloud	Contabo	bochka
One coding agent, workdays	stock-limited: all CX types "currently unavailable" on hetzner.com (2,026-09-28)	monthly cap reached	None that bite
One agent that never stops	stock-limited: all CX types "currently unavailable" on hetzner.com (2,026-09-28)	None that bite	None that bite
50 agents in parallel	stock-limited: all CX types "currently unavailable" on hetzner.com (2,026-09-28)	monthly cap reached how many machines can run at once: limit not published, probably fine at 50 (the typical published limit is 50)	None that bite
Sandboxes for your users	stock-limited: all CX types "currently unavailable" on hetzner.com (2,026-09-28)	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 300; the typical published limit is 50) monthly cap reached	None that bite
1,000 short jobs at once	stock-limited: all CX types "currently unavailable" on hetzner.com (2,026-09-28)	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 1,000; the typical published limit is 50) shared vCPUs on this tier: heavy, sustained CPU use can be slowed by other tenants monthly cap reached	max 2,400 starts/day (needs ~6,667) max 600 starts/hour (needs ~1,000) bursts above 90 starts/min are queued (a burst of 333 takes ~4 min to start)

Which one should you use?

Use Hetzner Cloud when

you want plain Linux servers billed by the hour, big dedicated machines, outbound firewall rules, or regions in the US and Singapore.

Billing by the hour. Useful for machines that live hours or days: delete a Hetzner server and billing stops, instead of paying a whole month.
Big dedicated machines. Useful for heavy single jobs: dedicated CCX servers go up to 48 vCPU and 192 GB of memory.
Outbound firewall rules. Useful if a machine must only reach a few addresses: free Cloud Firewalls can drop all other outbound traffic.

Use Contabo when

you want one cheap server that runs all month, a GPU or Windows Server, or a machine in the UK, Japan, India or Australia.

One server that runs all month. Useful for one always-on box: a flat monthly rent buys a 4 vCPU / 8 GB VPS with a static IPv4.
Regions around the world. Useful if your users are far from Europe: Contabo also runs in the UK, Japan, India and Australia.
GPUs and Windows Server. Useful if you need a GPU or Windows: Contabo rents RTX PRO 6000 servers and Windows Server licenses.

Where bochka fits

Hetzner Cloud and Contabo rent general servers, not agent sandboxes. If what you are really running is agents, bochka gives each one a full VM with its own kernel that starts from an API, saves itself every minute and costs nothing when stopped. It runs in the EU only, so it fits teams that want their agents' data to stay there.

Nested virtualization on every machine

Hetzner says nested virtualization is not possible on its cloud servers, and Contabo only offers it on the pricier Cloud VDS line. Agents that run Android emulators, Firecracker or their own VMs need /dev/kvm, which every bochka machine has.

Free stops, minute snapshots, fork while running

A powered-off Hetzner server bills until deleted, so you script snapshot, delete and recreate; a Contabo server bills all month, with one manual snapshot slot on Cloud VPS 4. bochka saves every minute, stops for free and forks while running.

Agents, desktop and key proxy built in

Both hosts hand you an empty, headless OS: you install each agent, a desktop and the glue to drive them over SSH, and the agent can read any key on the disk. bochka ships coding agents, a 60fps desktop and a credentials proxy.

Use bochka when agents start, stop and fork machines all day: each sandbox is a full VM with /dev/kvm, saved every minute, free when stopped, with a desktop and coding agents you drive from outside. Compare it one to one: bochka vs Hetzner Cloud and bochka vs Contabo.

Questions people ask

Is Hetzner Cloud cheaper than Contabo?

For one agent on workdays Hetzner comes to $3 a month, if you delete the server every night, against $7 on Contabo; for one agent that never stops Contabo is lower, $7 against $10. For 50 agents in parallel Hetzner comes to $141 against $330 on Contabo, and bochka to $317. All Hetzner prices use the CX line, which is currently out of stock.

Which is faster, Hetzner Cloud or Contabo?

There is no fair answer yet: a shared Hetzner CX33 did 8.88 Node.js build-and-test runs per second, and Contabo has not been measured. bochka did 26.69 runs per second on the same test.

Does Hetzner Cloud or Contabo bill by the hour?

Hetzner Cloud bills by the hour with a monthly cap, but a server bills until you delete it, even when it is off. Contabo has no hourly billing: it rents servers by the month with a minimum first term of one month.

Can Hetzner Cloud and Contabo run Docker and nested virtualization?

Both give you root on a full VM, so Docker works on either. Nested virtualization is not possible on Hetzner cloud servers and not supported on Contabo's VPS plans, only on its Cloud VDS line. Every bochka machine has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.

Where do Hetzner Cloud and Contabo run?

Hetzner Cloud runs in Germany, Finland, Ashburn, Hillsboro and Singapore. Contabo has 11 locations in the EU, the UK, the US, Singapore, Japan, India and Australia. bochka runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.

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