Hetzner vs OVHcloud: German vs French European infrastructure leaders

Germany and France, two answers to building European cloud

Europe has produced very few infrastructure companies large enough to build their own buildings, design their own servers and run them at continental scale. Two of them are the subject of this page. Hetzner, founded in 1997 and based in Bavaria, took the path of ruthless focus: a narrow catalogue, industrial efficiency and prices that have made it the default recommendation in developer forums for years. OVHcloud, founded in 1999 in Roubaix, took the path of breadth: a portfolio that runs from a shared web hosting plan through bare metal ranges and an OpenStack-based public cloud to hosted private cloud environments.

Both manufacture a competitive advantage rather than buying it. Hetzner's comes from standardisation and from owning the data centre parks its cloud runs in. OVHcloud's comes from assembling its own servers, running a distinctive water-cooling design and operating a large fibre network between its sites. That shared instinct for vertical integration is why the two are usually mentioned in the same breath, and it is also why they feel so different in practice.

This comparison is written for a team deciding where to put a European workload. It covers what each platform is made of, how each behaves operationally, and what a procurement conversation looks like with either. Accounts for both are listed on AllCloudShop: the Hetzner account page and the OVHcloud account page.

Two portfolios compared

How the two build and run capacity

OVHcloud's defining infrastructure choice is that it treats hardware as something to design rather than to purchase. Servers are assembled in its own facilities, cooled with a water-based system that removes heat at the component level, and connected by a fibre backbone the company operates between its sites. That control is what lets it offer bare metal at volume and at prices that resellers struggle to match, and it is why bare metal remains such a large part of the business rather than a legacy line.

Hetzner's defining choice is standardisation. Fewer configurations, produced and deployed in large batches inside data centre parks the company built, with a network engineered for the traffic patterns its customers actually generate. The cloud sits on top of that base as a proprietary platform with its own API, tightly integrated with the same physical estate that hosts the dedicated line.

The architectural consequence is visible in private networking. OVHcloud's vRack can stretch a private layer 2 network across bare metal servers, Public Cloud instances and hosted private cloud environments, even between data centres, which makes hybrid designs natural. Hetzner's Private Networks are region-scoped and cloud-scoped, elegant within their boundary but not a bridge between product lines. If you are weighing those models, the hybrid cloud explainer lays out where each pattern earns its keep.

Storage tells a similar story. Hetzner offers local NVMe with each cloud server, Cloud Volumes for attachable capacity and Storage Box for inexpensive backup space. OVHcloud offers block storage in several performance classes, object storage with both S3 and Swift interfaces, and a cold archive tier for data you need to keep but rarely read. The cloud backup strategies article covers how to combine those tiers sensibly.

What really separates them

1. Managed services. OVHcloud runs your Kubernetes control plane, your PostgreSQL cluster and your Kafka brokers if you want it to. Hetzner runs none of those. That single row changes the staffing model for a project more than any performance consideration.
2. Standards compatibility. OVHcloud Public Cloud speaks OpenStack, so the standard clients, Horizon dashboard and existing OpenStack automation work against it. Hetzner's API is its own, clean and well documented but not a standard anyone else implements.
3. Breadth of the relationship. With OVHcloud you can buy a domain, a mailbox, a web hosting plan, a bare metal fleet, a VMware environment and a public cloud project from one vendor. Hetzner covers a much narrower band deliberately.
4. Accelerated compute. GPU instances and managed AI services are part of the OVHcloud catalogue. Hetzner does not sell accelerators at all, which rules it out for training and GPU-backed inference.
5. Simplicity. This one favours Hetzner. A small catalogue with consistent behaviour is easier to learn, easier to automate and easier to reason about than a portfolio assembled over two decades.

The procurement conversation

Both providers answer the European sovereignty question convincingly, which is increasingly the reason they appear on a shortlist at all. OVHcloud has made that positioning central to how it sells, emphasising European ownership, European data centres and offers aimed at public sector and regulated buyers. Hetzner makes the same point quietly by simply being a German company running German and Finnish facilities. Either way, the data residency and sovereignty discussion is worth reading before you assume what your auditors will accept.

Where they differ commercially is in how a large purchase is handled. OVHcloud has an enterprise sales organisation, formal support tiers, and the apparatus a procurement department expects from a listed company, including options for managed and private environments. Hetzner's model is self-service with technically competent ticket support, which suits engineering-led buying and frustrates organisations that want a named contact and a negotiated contract.

Cost behaviour also differs. Hetzner's pricing is famously low and its plan list is short enough that a budget is easy to forecast. OVHcloud's Public Cloud is metered like any cloud, with bare metal and VPS billed monthly, so a mixed estate produces a more complex invoice that rewards the discipline described in the cost monitoring and budget alerts guide.

Working with each platform

Hetzner's developer experience is famously tidy. Projects isolate environments, tokens are scoped to a project, and hcloud plus the Terraform provider cover the whole resource set. Cloud-init user data means a new server can arrive fully configured. Teams who like to describe an environment in a few hundred lines of code and rebuild it on demand find the platform unusually cooperative.

OVHcloud offers two surfaces and it is worth knowing which one you are using. The OVHcloud API and control panel manage the account, bare metal, VPS and product-level operations, while Public Cloud projects additionally expose OpenStack endpoints, so the standard OpenStack command line clients and libraries work directly. That dual nature is powerful for teams with OpenStack experience and mildly confusing for those without. The OVHcloud API console and the Public Cloud documentation are the places to start.

Both support the same day-to-day habits: SSH key management at creation, snapshots, custom images and firewall rules. The real difference is what you can hand over. On OVHcloud a developer can request a managed Kubernetes cluster and a managed database and be running in the afternoon. On Hetzner the same afternoon is spent installing and configuring them, a trade the managed Kubernetes for small teams article puts into perspective.

Where each provider leads

Hetzner

Nobody in Europe makes a fixed budget stretch further for general-purpose compute. Dedicated vCPU instances behave consistently, the Arm64 family adds an efficiency option, hourly metering makes experimentation cheap, and the jump to Dedicated Root Servers is available when virtualisation stops being enough. For a team that already runs its own databases and clusters, the platform removes cost without removing capability.

The second strength is coherence. Because the catalogue is small, the console, the API, the CLI and the Terraform provider all agree with each other, and there is very little to learn that you will not use.

OVHcloud

Portfolio breadth is the obvious answer, but the more useful framing is that OVHcloud can be the only infrastructure vendor a European company needs. Bare metal fleets, an OpenStack public cloud, VMware-based private environments, managed data services, GPU capacity and a private network that spans all of them is a combination few providers anywhere can assemble, and almost none of them are European.

It is also the stronger answer for buyers with formal requirements. A listed European company with an enterprise sales organisation, documented support tiers and offers aimed at regulated sectors is an easier vendor to get through a procurement committee.

Where each one disappoints

Hetzner

No managed Kubernetes, no managed databases, no platform services and no GPUs means the operational burden sits with you permanently. New accounts start with conservative resource ceilings that rise as the relationship matures, which can be inconvenient for a large launch. The footprint outside Europe is thin, and there is no enterprise sales motion for buyers who need one.

OVHcloud

Breadth brings inconsistency. Product lines acquired or built at different times do not share one interface, and a new customer can spend real time working out which panel governs which resource. The dual API surface is powerful but adds a learning curve. The company has also had to rebuild customer trust in its resilience story since a fire destroyed a data centre in Strasbourg in 2021, an episode that made multi-site design and independent backups a standard part of every serious conversation about the platform.

Choosing between the two

Hetzner is the better answer when you want maximum compute for a fixed European budget, when your team is comfortable operating the layers above the operating system, and when a small, consistent catalogue is a feature rather than a limitation. Software companies, research groups and cost-sensitive product teams do well here. The Hetzner account listing describes the options.

OVHcloud is the better answer when you need managed services, GPU capacity, a private network spanning bare metal and virtual machines, or a vendor that a procurement department will recognise. Enterprises, public sector buyers and companies consolidating several suppliers into one benefit most; the OVHcloud account listing is the entry point.

To widen the field, OVHcloud against Scaleway compares the two French platforms directly, Scaleway against Hetzner puts cloud-native services beside raw value, and Hetzner against Contabo covers the German value pairing.

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