Hetzner alternatives in 2026: crypto payment, 10 Gbps, no setup fees

Hetzner does not accept cryptocurrency. Its payment documentation states, “We do not accept cryptocurrencies,” and lists cards, SEPA direct debit, bank transfer and PayPal instead. 2026 also changed the math: monthly prices rose on 1 April for new and existing contracts, new orders rose again on 15 June, and the 10 Gbps uplink is still metered beyond 20 TB.

The short version

Hetzner prices in this article exclude VAT and include one IPv4 address. They were read from Hetzner’s order page on 15 October 2026.

Does Hetzner accept crypto or Bitcoin?

No, and the documentation leaves no room for interpretation. Hetzner’s Payment Overview, last changed on 28 July 2026, lists four payment methods: credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, AMEX and UnionPay), SEPA direct debit for euro accounts, bank or wire transfer, and PayPal for manual payments. It refuses wallets such as Apple Pay, offers no partial payments or payment plans, and states: “We do not accept cryptocurrencies.” That rules out Bitcoin, Monero and stablecoins alike.

New accounts can also meet an identity check. Hetzner’s fraud prevention FAQ, last changed on 6 August 2026, says the company “may ask you to verify your account before we process an order”, either with a copy of a valid government-issued ID such as an ID card or passport, or with an advance payment from your own credit card. It also advises against registering through a VPN or with a free email address.

PowerDedi works the other way round. Sign-up needs an email address and nothing else, and payment is in crypto only: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, USDT on TRON (TRC-20) or Solana. Prices are set in US dollars, and the crypto amount is locked when you open the payment, for 45 minutes in BTC and XMR and 30 minutes in the other coins. You can top up an account balance and let renewals draw from it automatically. The details are on our crypto payments page and our no-KYC dedicated servers page.

What changed at Hetzner in 2026

Hetzner changed its dedicated-server pricing several times this year, citing the cost of RAM and NVMe drives. The dates, from Hetzner’s statements and documentation:

The result for a typical entry server: the AX42-1 now costs €99 a month with its IPv4 address, plus €49 once. The 1 April increase reached servers already in service; the 15 June prices apply to new orders.

Does Hetzner offer 10 Gbps unmetered?

No. Every Hetzner dedicated server comes with a 1 Gbit/s port and unlimited traffic. Faster connectivity means the 10G uplink add-on, priced at €43 a month on the add-on list last changed on 7 October 2026. It includes 20 TB of outgoing traffic per month; beyond that, Hetzner bills €1 per TB, in 100 MB blocks. Incoming and internal traffic are not counted.

The uplink comes with conditions, all from Hetzner’s documentation:

• One uplink per server, and an existing server gets new IP addresses when it moves to 10G.
• The Robot firewall is not available on servers with a 10G uplink.
• Not every model takes it: the AX42 configurations are listed without the 10G option.

What the uplink costs as outbound traffic grows:

To be fair to Hetzner, €1 per TB is cheap. In our survey of 19 providers, the median 10 Gbps unmetered add-on costs about $630 a month, so Hetzner’s metered uplink stays cheaper up to roughly 500 TB a month. Unmetered pays off for sustained heavy traffic and for months you can’t predict; our guide to unmetered, 95th percentile and per-TB billing works through the trade-off. On PowerDedi, each server has its own 10 Gbps unmetered port, with no quota, overage fee or ratio; the uplinks beyond the port are shared, as on any network.

Hetzner model → nearest PowerDedi equivalent

Hetzner prices were read from its order page on 15 October 2026. They exclude VAT and include the primary IPv4 address, which the June table lists separately at €1.70. Dollar amounts use the ECB reference rate of $1.1208 per euro on the same day. PowerDedi prices include a 10 Gbps unmetered port, DDoS mitigation and no setup fee; the full list is on our pricing page.

On 15 October 2026, PowerDedi’s monthly price was lower in every row except the SX295-1, and no row carries a setup fee on our side. Hetzner keeps real advantages in places: ECC memory on the AX102-2, twice the RAM on the AX41-1-LTD when it is in stock, and larger NVMe drives on the SX295-1. Hetzner also publishes its own US-dollar prices, slightly above these conversions: the June table lists the AX42-1 at $117.10 before its IPv4 address. For other budget configurations, see our cheap dedicated servers.

Is there a Hetzner alternative in the USA?

Not for bare metal from Hetzner itself. Hetzner’s locations documentation states that Ashburn, Hillsboro and Singapore “are currently only available for cloud products” and that you cannot order dedicated root servers located there. Its dedicated servers are in Falkenstein and Nuremberg, in Germany, and Helsinki, in Finland.

PowerDedi has dedicated servers in New York, Miami and Los Angeles, alongside Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Zürich, Singapore and Tokyo. Stock varies by model: the Ryzen 5 7600, Ryzen 7 7700 and Ryzen 9 9950X are offered in all three US cities, the EPYC 9454P in New York and Los Angeles, and the RTX PRO 4000 GPU server in New York. In-stock configurations are provisioned about 15 minutes after on-chain confirmation of the payment; others are built to order in 24 or 72 hours.

Who should stay with Hetzner

• You pay by card, SEPA direct debit or PayPal and want euro invoices. PowerDedi accepts crypto only.
• You start and stop servers often. Hetzner’s order page shows an hourly rate for each server, capped at the monthly price, and its documentation says dedicated servers are cancelled immediately. PowerDedi bills by the month.
• You want the lowest entry price. The AX41-1-LTD costs €59 a month with no setup fee while stock lasts, and the Server Auction sells refurbished servers without setup fees.
• You also use Hetzner Cloud. Its cloud servers run in Germany, Finland, Ashburn, Hillsboro and Singapore.
• You need certified facilities. Hetzner’s data centers in Nuremberg, Falkenstein and Helsinki are ISO 27001:2022 certified.
• Your traffic is moderate. Below roughly 500 TB a month, the metered 10G uplink costs less than the median unmetered add-on in our survey, and Hetzner includes DDoS protection free of charge.

To be explicit about what PowerDedi does not offer: card, PayPal or bank payments; managed services; private networking between servers; cloud instances or hourly billing; servers with more than one GPU (one GPU per server, no NVLink); compliance certifications; and email, phone or chat support. Support is by ticket from the client area, for customers with an active server. We have no locations in Canada, Australia or India, and GPU or crypto mining is not permitted.

Other Hetzner alternatives

If PowerDedi isn’t the right fit either, these providers cover other needs. One fact each, checked in October 2026:

Migrating from Hetzner: a checklist

1. Take inventory. List services, open ports, cron jobs, IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, reverse DNS entries and Robot firewall rules. Addresses and firewall rules stay behind; everything else has to be rebuilt or copied.
2. Lower DNS TTLs to about 300 seconds, at least one old TTL period before the switch.
3. Order and test the new server. Start with our getting started guide, then run iperf3 between the old and the new server, in both directions, as described in testing your server’s network speed; the result tells you how long the copy will take.
4. Copy the data with rsync, once while services run and once more with them stopped. Export databases with their own dump or replication tools rather than copying live data files.

   # first pass, services still running
   rsync -aHAX --numeric-ids --info=progress2 /srv/ root@203.0.113.10:/srv/
   # final pass, services stopped on the old server
   rsync -aHAX --numeric-ids --delete /srv/ root@203.0.113.10:/srv/

5. Update IPv6. Each PowerDedi server has its own routed /64: change AAAA records, firewall rules and any service bound to the old address.
6. Set reverse DNS for the new IPv4 and IPv6 addresses before moving a mail server.
7. Switch DNS and watch the logs on both machines until traffic to the old addresses stops, then restore your usual TTLs.
8. Cancel at Hetzner last, after checking your backups on the new server. A Hetzner cancellation takes effect immediately, so there is no grace period to fall back on.

Sources

• Payment Overview — Hetzner Docs, last changed 28 July 2026
• Fraud prevention FAQ — Hetzner Docs, last changed 6 August 2026
• Hetzner increases prices from April 1 — heise online, 23 February 2026
• Details regarding the standardization and price adjustment of our server products effective 15 June 2026 — Hetzner, 27 May 2026
• Hetzner Price Adjustment 15 June 2026 — Hetzner Docs, last changed 8 July 2026
• Price Dedicated Server Addons — Hetzner Docs, last changed 7 October 2026
• 10G Uplink — Hetzner Docs, last changed 23 September 2026
• Traffic — Hetzner Docs
• AX Server – Possible configurations and add-ons — Hetzner Docs, last changed 9 October 2026
• Locations — Hetzner Docs
• Hetzner Online GmbH - Robot: order page — Hetzner, prices shown with 19% German VAT, checked 15 October 2026
• Find cheap dedicated servers with AMD & Intel CPUs — Hetzner