As of 2 Nov 2026, the panel rates Hetzner Cloud 2.5/5 and netcup VPS 2/5 in Web Hosting. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 3 of the 6 judges pick Hetzner Cloud and 3 pick netcup VPS. Hetzner Cloud scores higher on 4 of 6 criteria (European sovereignty, Control panel, WordPress & developer tooling, Security, backups & recovery, plus 1 more). netcup VPS scores higher on 2 of 6 criteria (Performance, uptime & infrastructure and Scaling, migration & exit). Provenance — Hetzner Cloud: EU-Made; netcup VPS: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
Hetzner Cloud leads on management and developer tools (6.7 vs 4.3, six judges), support and service (4.3 vs 2.7, six judges), security and backups (5.7 vs 3.8, five judges, one tie) and sovereignty (7.2 vs 3.8, six judges). netcup VPS leads on pricing transparency (6.0 vs 2.2, five judges) with published prices from 8,26 € a month on a 12-month term to 289,46 €, both including 19% VAT, plus performance and reliability (5.3 vs 3.7, five judges) and scaling and portability (4.7 vs 4.0, five judges). Weighted totals split: netcup VPS ahead for the agency lead (5.4 vs 5.3), app developer (5.7 vs 5.3) and skeptic (5.6 vs 4.9); Hetzner Cloud ahead for the shop operator (5.3 vs 5) and data protection officer (5.6 vs 4.8). Hetzner Cloud has no verdict summary and its pricing is unweighted (the vendor publishes no prices); listed sovereignty attributes read unknown for both products.
Choose Hetzner Cloud if
Your team scripts infrastructure daily through a management console and API — six judges lean Hetzner Cloud on management and developer tools (6.7 vs 4.3).
You need support channels with published hours and response times — six judges lean Hetzner Cloud on support and service (4.3 vs 2.7); netcup VPS's verdict records no public information on phone or chat channels, hours or response times.
Your backup policy requires stated snapshot retention — five judges lean Hetzner Cloud on security and backups (5.7 vs 3.8); netcup VPS's verdict documents only customer-triggered snapshots without stated retention.
Your compliance review scores sovereignty first — six judges lean Hetzner Cloud there (7.2 vs 3.8), a criterion where the netcup VPS bench itself split 3-6.
You sit in the data protection officer's chair — that judge's weighted total reads 5.6 for Hetzner Cloud against 4.8 for netcup VPS.
Choose netcup VPS if
You need published prices before signing — five judges lean netcup VPS on pricing transparency (6.0 vs 2.2), with prices from 8,26 € a month on a 12-month term to 289,46 €, both including 19% VAT.
You buy against named hardware generations — five judges lean netcup VPS on performance and reliability (5.3 vs 3.7), on hardware named to the generation (AMD EPYC 9645, DDR5, NVMe).
You plan to step between fixed server sizes on a published ladder — five judges lean netcup VPS on scaling and portability (4.7 vs 4.0).
You judge like the app developer or the skeptic — their weighted totals read 5.7 and 5.6 for netcup VPS against 5.3 and 4.9 for Hetzner Cloud.
Your priorities match the agency lead's — the weighted total reads 5.4 for netcup VPS against 5.3 for Hetzner Cloud.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Small-Business Owner
Owns a heating and plumbing firm with twelve staff, a WordPress site a nephew built and twelve mailboxes on the same contract. Does not know what PHP is and does not want to learn it. When the site shows a warning or the mail stops, they need someone on the phone in German the same day, backups that the support can restore, and an invoice that matches the price on the website, year after year.
Hetzner Cloud
This judge's pick
netcup VPS
Criterion by criterion
Performance, uptime & infrastructure
Hetzner Cloud
There is a public status page with dated incidents and maintenance entries down to individual data centres, and European cloud locations in Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki are named. But we found no public information on processor, memory or storage per tariff, on caching or PHP handling, or on any uptime guarantee, so I cannot see what I am actually buying in performance terms.
netcup VPS
Every tariff spells out cores, RAM and NVMe or SSD storage, the root-server line adds dedicated AMD EPYC 9645 cores, DDR5 memory, hardware RAID, redundant power and uplinks, and a guaranteed minimum availability of 99,9 %, with a status page alongside. Solid engineering on paper, but the guarantee stops one step below the entry tariffs I would actually buy.
Control panel, WordPress & developer tooling
Hetzner Cloud
The console, a ready WordPress image with MySQL and Apache, snapshots, cloud firewalls and a documented API with a command-line tool are all there for the technically minded. But the pages say WordPress is preinstalled and not enabled, with setup through an SSH key or root password, and we found no public information on a guided one-click flow, staging, automatic updates or an agency view — as a non-technical owner I would be lost the first day.
netcup VPS
For a server product this is what I would expect: a Server Control Panel for start, stop, reboot, snapshots, a VNC console and traffic statistics, full root access, image import and export, and a documented REST API. I found no public information on one-click WordPress installs, staging copies or database administration in a panel — on this product I would have to run the site myself, which is exactly what I cannot do.
Security, backups & recovery
Hetzner Cloud
Backups are toggleable per server, run daily into seven slots, are stored encrypted — one page states fourteen days' retention while another describes automatic deletion of the oldest copy when the slots fill — and I could rebuild a whole server from a backup or snapshot myself, with cloud firewalls and a yearly TÜV Rheinland audit of the technical measures also documented. The product is stated to be unmanaged, meaning I set up and answer for the backups myself, and we found no public information on malware scanning, two-factor login, DDoS protection or single-file restore — nobody here would restore a broken WordPress site for me.
netcup VPS
DDoS protection is included, snapshots with image import and export exist, and the vendor publishes ISO 27001, ISO 27701, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certificates validated yearly. I found no public information on backup frequency, retention, a self-service restore, malware cleanup or a web application firewall — as someone who needs a backup the support can restore the same day, that decides it for me.
Scaling, migration & exit
Hetzner Cloud
Moving things around is genuinely documented: cloud servers between projects, domains by a transfer token valid for seven days, storage boxes and rack space, and a backup can rebuild the server in any location, with volumes bookable separately. But we found no public information on tariff limits, a migration service from my old host, export of mail, cancellation periods or what happens to my data after the contract ends.
netcup VPS
The tariff ladder runs from a small two-core, four-gigabyte server up to twenty-four dedicated cores, storage grows with Local Block Storage at 0,012 € plus VAT per GB with no fixed term, monthly terms are available and a 30-day money-back guarantee states the refund in full. Image export and full root access mean my files sit in standard form, but I found no public information on a migration service in, domain transfer out or the cancellation details.
Support, domains & email
Hetzner Cloud
Mailboxes are documented in welcome detail — webmail, per-mailbox spam filters and blacklists, storage limits, password resets — with DNS manageable through the API and email notifications for status reports. But for someone who needs a German speaker on the phone the same day, we found no public information on phone or chat support, on hours, languages or response times; the captured pages show a community forum and the existence of an opening-hours page, nothing more.
netcup VPS
The captured pages show a help centre, a vServer FAQ and a Managed vServer variant in which netcup's experts take over maintenance, security updates, configuration and monitoring. Beyond that I found no public information on phone, chat or ticket channels, hours, response times, or domains and mailboxes in the same account — with twelve staff and twelve mailboxes, a documented German phone number is the thing I look for first.
European sovereignty
Hetzner Cloud
This is the strongest part for a German small business: Hetzner Online GmbH in Gunzenhausen as the contracting partner, cloud locations in Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki, backups and customer data staying in the EU for EU locations, a published data processing agreement under Article 28, a public list of subcontractors, and only German or Finnish authorities accepted for the European data centres. What keeps it off the top marks: the subcontractor list's own locations and certifications such as ISO 27001 are not shown on the captured pages — the pages document an annual TÜV Rheinland audit of the technical measures instead — and the customer can actively choose US or Singapore locations for the server data.
netcup VPS
netcup GmbH is registered in Karlsruhe, Germany and part of the Austrian Anexia group, publishes a GDPR page with an appointed data protection officer and an access-request channel through the customer panel, and holds ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 certifications. The captured data-centre page itself returned a not-found notice, and I found no public information on a published data processing agreement or a list of subprocessors, so the chain beyond the German company stays open.
Pricing transparency
Hetzner Cloud
The only pricing statement captured points me to the info boxes on the cloud product page, and we found no public information on actual tariff prices, what is included, minimum terms or VAT treatment in these captures. A billing notice about charging outstanding amounts below €10 confirms postpaid invoicing, but I cannot verify from these pages that the invoice will match a price on the website — for me that is the bare minimum and it is not met here.
netcup VPS
Every tariff shows the discounted monthly price for the twelve-month term next to the regular price, both including 19 % VAT, with one-, twelve- and twenty-four-month terms at minus 13 and minus 26 per cent, and add-on storage is priced per gigabyte plus VAT with the rounding stated. The money-back terms spell out exactly what comes back. I found no public information on setup fees or the cost of snapshots and restores, which keeps the invoice from being fully computable before I buy.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Hetzner Cloud
netcup VPS
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Questions about Hetzner Cloud and netcup VPS
Which is better, Hetzner Cloud or netcup VPS?
As of 2 Nov 2026, the panel rates Hetzner Cloud higher: 2.5/5 against 2/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 3 of the 6 judges pick Hetzner Cloud and 3 pick netcup VPS. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Hetzner Cloud or netcup VPS European?
Hetzner Cloud is European (EU-Made). netcup VPS is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.