Hetzner’s new two-tier pricing changes how Europe buys hosting

Hetzner has announced its third pricing-related change in five months, and this one is notably different from the previous two. Effective June 15, the German hosting provider is restructuring its dedicated server portfolio into standardized tiers and introducing a new hardware category called the Limited tier, while explicitly protecting existing customers from any price increase.

That last part matters. When Hetzner raised cloud and dedicated server prices on April 1, the increases applied across the board, hitting both new signups and long-standing customers simultaneously. Cloud servers in Germany and Finland climbed between 30 and 37 percent. dedicated servers followed with increases ranging from 3 to 21 percent. Storage went up 30 percent. Customers on monthly contracts had no way to lock in their old rates before those charges landed. The June 15 update takes a different approach entirely. New pricing applies only to new orders, and currently rented servers retain their existing contract terms.

The structural change, however, is what the wider European hosting market will be watching closely. Hetzner is formally introducing hardware-tier segmentation as a deliberate product decision. Its standard server lines now carry -1, -2, and -3 designations. Sitting alongside them is the -1-Ltd Limited tier, which uses lower-cost hardware components sourced when procurement conditions make them more economical. In practice, this creates two distinct quality levels at two distinct price points, something Hetzner has not historically offered.

The underlying reason is not difficult to trace. Server DRAM contract prices rose sharply through late 2025 and into 2026, driven partly by memory manufacturers reallocating production capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI systems. Because that capacity shift operates on multi-year cycles, the cost pressure on conventional server RAM is not expected to ease quickly. Hetzner’s restructuring appears to reflect that reality directly.

Across Europe, other providers are navigating the same conditions. OVHcloud, Scaleway, and IONOS have each adjusted pricing in 2026, citing comparable hardware cost pressures. None of them, though, has yet introduced explicit hardware-tier segmentation comparable to Hetzner’s Limited tier. For resellers and agencies that have built client infrastructure around a single Hetzner quality standard, the shift creates a conversation that did not previously exist.