Is Hetzner really cheaper than AWS EKS?

Yes - for a comparable workload (3 masters + 3 workers, each 8 vCPU / 32 GB RAM), a self-managed K3s cluster on Hetzner costs roughly €280/month, while an equivalent AWS EKS cluster costs roughly €2,160/month. The ~85% delta comes from cheaper compute, free internal traffic, no EKS control-plane fee and dramatically cheaper egress.

What compliance does Hetzner satisfy?

Hetzner data centres are ISO 27001 certified and fully GDPR-compliant. Locations in Germany (Falkenstein, Nuremberg) and Finland satisfy EU data sovereignty requirements - for many European companies, an additional advantage on top of cost.

When does AWS EKS still make sense?

EKS is the right choice when you're deeply integrated with the AWS ecosystem (RDS, S3, Lambda, IRSA), regulatory requirements demand a US-certified provider, or when you need globally distributed workloads across multiple AWS regions.

Hetzner vs. AWS EKS: Honest Kubernetes Cost Comparison for 2026

TL;DR - A production-grade cluster with 3 masters and 3 workers (each 8 vCPU / 32 GB RAM, 200 GB storage, one load balancer, 5 TB monthly egress) costs roughly €280/month on Hetzner versus €2,160/month on AWS EKS - same hardware capacity, German data sovereignty, ISO 27001.

Setup assumptions

We compare a “production-ready” cluster - not the cheapest toy cluster but the one you actually run customer workloads on. Both clusters have:

3 control-plane nodes (HA)
3 worker nodes
Per node: 8 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, 200 GB SSD
1 load balancer with public IP
5 TB outbound traffic per month
S3-compatible backup storage for Velero

Compute

Item	Hetzner Cloud	AWS EKS
6× CCX33 / m6i.2xlarge	6 × €36 = €216	6 × €248 = €1,488
Control-plane premium	€0 (self-managed)	€73 (EKS cluster fee)

Storage

Item	Hetzner	AWS
6× 200 GB block storage	€52.80	€110.40 (gp3)
500 GB backup	€2.30 (Object Storage)	€11.50 (S3 Standard)

Load balancer + network

Item	Hetzner	AWS
LB11 / NLB	€4.76	~€16 + LCU-hours
Egress 5 TB	€4	€460 (€0.09/GB)

2-Day Hands-on Workshop

K3s on Hetzner - production-ready setup

In 2 days, learn how to build a production-ready Kubernetes cluster on Hetzner - including HA, GitOps, backup and monitoring.

View workshop details

Total

Hetzner Cloud (K3s self-managed):  €279.86/month
AWS EKS:                          €2,158.90/month

Difference: €1,879/month = €22,500/year

What AWS gives you for the premium

To keep the comparison fair: at this premium, AWS gives you things Hetzner doesn’t:

Managed control plane with SLA - no etcd backups, no manual k8s upgrades
Deep IAM integration - IRSA / Pod Identity for AWS services
Global network with multi-region and CloudFront
Vast service ecosystem - RDS, S3, Lambda, SQS, EventBridge

If you need exactly those features, EKS is right. If not, you pay for them anyway.

When does Hetzner win?

Workloads are reasonably static (no extreme auto-scaling)
You must stay in the EU (GDPR, data sovereignty)
Your team can operate Kubernetes or has a managed partner
Egress traffic matters (streaming, APIs, downloads)

How we approach this with clients

In the 2-day K3s on Hetzner workshop we build a production-ready HA cluster together - with ArgoCD, Velero backups, Cilium NetworkPolicies, cert-manager + ingress. You leave with a cluster you can put production workloads on the next day.

Setup assumptions

Compute

Storage

Load balancer + network

K3s on Hetzner - production-ready setup

Total

What AWS gives you for the premium

When does Hetzner win?

How we approach this with clients

K3s on Hetzner - production-ready setup

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