At the roughly $5-6.50/month price point, no single plan wins every spec. Hetzner's CPX11 ($4.56/mo) has the most vCPUs and by far the most bandwidth. Hostinger's KVM 1 ($6.49/mo) actually ships the most RAM and storage of the four, despite being the priciest. DigitalOcean and Vultr sit in the middle on price with the weakest specs overall.
Key takeaways
- Hetzner's CPX11 is cheapest and wins on vCPU count and bandwidth — 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe, 20 TB bandwidth for $4.56/month.
- DigitalOcean and Vultr are nearly identical at $6/month: 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, ~25 GB SSD, ~1 TB bandwidth — the weakest RAM and storage of the four.
- Hostinger's KVM 1 is the most expensive at $6.49/month, but not the worst spec sheet — it actually has the most RAM (4 GB) and storage (50 GB NVMe) of all four plans. Its real weak point is bandwidth: 4 TB, a fifth of Hetzner's 20 TB but four times DigitalOcean's or Vultr's ~1 TB.
- Which plan "wins" depends on what you're actually running. A bandwidth-heavy static site or media server wants Hetzner; a memory-hungry single app with light outbound traffic is a genuine fit for Hostinger's extra RAM.
- Vultr and DigitalOcean's case here is ecosystem, not specs — they're not ahead of either Hetzner or Hostinger on any metric in this comparison.
The comparison
| Provider / plan | Price | vCPU | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner CPX11 | $4.56/mo | 2 | 2 GB | 40 GB NVMe | 20 TB |
| DigitalOcean Basic | $6.00/mo | 1 | 1 GB | ~25 GB SSD | ~1 TB |
| Vultr Cloud Compute (High Frequency) | $6.00/mo | 1 | 1 GB | 25 GB NVMe | 1 TB |
| Hostinger KVM 1 | $6.49/mo | 1 | 4 GB | 50 GB NVMe | 4 TB |
Bar length = included monthly bandwidth, scaled to Hetzner's 20 TB. Sourced October 2026.
Where Hetzner's lead actually comes from
Hetzner runs its own European data centers rather than reselling capacity on top of a larger cloud, and that vertical integration is the honest explanation for the price and bandwidth gap — not a catch hiding somewhere in the fine print. The trade-offs developers report are real but narrower than the spec sheet suggests: fewer regions outside Europe, and a support experience some describe as more self-serve than a US-based host's live chat. For a solo developer comfortable managing their own server, neither is disqualifying.
Where Hostinger's VPS actually makes sense
Hostinger's KVM 1 is the most expensive plan here, but dismissing it as simply the worst spec sheet isn't accurate — it carries the most RAM and the most NVMe storage of the four, genuinely more than Hetzner's CPX11. For a single memory-hungry application (a Node.js or Django process with a real in-memory cache, for instance) that isn't pushing heavy outbound traffic, the extra 2 GB of RAM over Hetzner can matter more than the single missing vCPU core or the smaller bandwidth allowance. Where it clearly loses is bandwidth — at a fifth of Hetzner's allowance, a traffic-heavy static site or media server will hit that ceiling first.
Which one to pick
- Lowest price, most vCPUs, most bandwidth, comfortable managing your own box: Hetzner CPX11.
- Single app that needs RAM headroom more than raw CPU or bandwidth: Hostinger's KVM 1 genuinely has the most RAM and storage of the four, despite the higher price.
- Want the largest ecosystem and most third-party tutorials at this price: DigitalOcean or Vultr — nearly identical to each other, and not ahead of either Hetzner or Hostinger on any single spec here.
- Running Django, Next.js SSR, or anything needing real headroom: compare Hetzner's extra vCPU against Hostinger's extra RAM for your specific workload — see the Django hosting cost breakdown for what that headroom is actually for.