Hetzner Cloud Backups or Snapshots: which costs less?
Backups are a flat 20% of the server price. Snapshots are €0.0143 per compressed GB-month. Snapshots cost less while the compressed storage you keep stays under the crossover, and more above it. On a CPX22 the crossover is 272.6 to 279.6 GB-month; on a CX23 it is 76.8 to 83.8. The range exists because the 20% can be read off the server price alone or off the marketing card price, which includes the Primary IPv4 at €0.50 a month. They are also not substitutes: Backups run daily through seven rotating slots, so the oldest is deleted for you, while Snapshots are made by hand and stay until you delete them, including after the server itself is gone.
Key finding The two published bases differ by one line, the Primary IPv4. Hetzner documents it at €0.50 a month billed separately, which puts the CPX22 Backup fee at €3.90. The public marketing card instead shows a starting Backup price of €1.1980, exactly 20% of a €5.99 displayed price that includes the address. No invoice was verified, so both are shown and neither is presented as confirmed.
Prices verified 1 September 2026 against each vendor’s own pricing page, linked in full below.
KEY FINDING. Hetzner documents Backups at 20% of the server price and Snapshots at €0.0143 per compressed GB-month. For an orderable EU CPX22, the billing documentation produces a calculated €3.90 monthly Backup fee and a 272.6 GB-month snapshot break-even. Hetzner’s public marketing card instead implies €4.00 and 279.6 GB-month because its displayed plan price includes Primary IPv4. We did not verify an invoice, so this article shows both published outcomes and treats €3.90 as the documented billing basis, not an invoice-confirmed charge. Backups run daily with seven rotating slots; Snapshots are manual and survive server deletion. Neither includes attached Volumes or replaces an application-aware backup stored with another provider.
Prices checked 1 Sep 2026. Server prices excluding IPv4 still match Hetzner’s 15 June 2026 price-adjustment notice, re-read 13 Oct 2026; Hetzner’s live pricing pages showed no prices to that read, so the snapshot rate and the IPv4-inclusive card prices stay as checked on 1 Sep. CX and CAX availability was last checked 8 Sep; other plans’ availability, 1 Sep. EU prices exclude VAT. Server-only and IPv4-inclusive bases are shown separately.
This page links to each vendor’s own pricing page. No affiliate links are used at this time.
Answer in 30 seconds
Two things decide this, and only one of them is price.
On price, snapshots win at small retained volumes and lose at large ones. The crossover is where your total compressed snapshot storage, added across every snapshot you keep, costs the same as 20% of your server price. On a CPX22, the two published bases put that crossover at 272.6 to 279.6 compressed GB-month. On a CX23, it is 76.8 to 83.8.
On behaviour, they are not substitutes. Backups are created automatically every day and rotate through seven slots, so the oldest is deleted when a new one arrives. Snapshots are created by hand and stay until you delete them, including after the server itself is gone. If nobody triggers a snapshot, no snapshot exists.
The practical read: if you want something running unattended, Backups are the automated option and the fee is predictable. If you want a small number of deliberate restore points, Snapshots can cost less while retained compressed storage stays below the plan’s break-even point, and they survive server deletion.
One caveat that applies to both: this compares Hetzner’s own two features against each other. Neither is provider-independent or application-aware.
For the broader market view, compare automatic backup fees, snapshot storage and independent copies across nine VPS providers.
Current Hetzner backup and snapshot pricing
Checked on the official pages on 1 Sep 2026. On 13 Oct 2026 Hetzner’s documentation still gave the 20% Backup rule, compressed-size snapshot billing and €0.50 a month for a Primary IPv4. The €0.0143 snapshot rate comes from the pricing pages, which did not show prices to our 13 Oct re-check, so it stays as read on 1 Sep.
| Item | Price | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backups | 20% of the server’s monthly price | Flat monthly fee per server | Cloud billing FAQ |
| Backup slots | 7 per server, oldest rotates out | n/a | Backups and Snapshots overview |
| Snapshots | €0.0143 per GB per month | Compressed stored size | Cloud pricing pages |
| Primary IPv4 | €0.50 per month | Billed separately; included in the marketing-card displayed total | Cloud Servers and Primary IP docs |
| VAT | Excluded from all figures above | n/a | Cloud pricing pages |
Hetzner’s billing FAQ is explicit that snapshot billing follows compressed size, not disk size: create a snapshot of a 40 GB disk and “we will bill you for 40GB or less”, depending on how well the data compresses.
A discrepancy worth knowing about. Hetzner’s billing FAQ says Backups are 20% of the server price. Its Cloud Servers overview also says server prices exclude public IPs, and its Primary IP overview states Primary IPv4 is €0.50 per month and billed separately. Those documents support Basis A. The public marketing card nevertheless shows a starting Backup price of €1.1980, exactly 20% of the €5.99 displayed price including IPv4. We did not verify an invoice, so Basis B is retained only as a marketing-card-implied scenario, not as an invoice-confirmed fee.
Break-even cost by Cloud plan
Formulas, so you can redo this with your own plan:
Monthly backup cost = server monthly price × 20%
Monthly snapshot cost = total retained compressed GB × €0.0143
Break-even compressed GB = monthly backup cost ÷ €0.0143Note added 8 September 2026. The CX and CAX rows below are priced from Hetzner’s published figures, but Hetzner has been showing its whole cost-optimized line as unavailable to order since at least 2 September, and it was still marked that way on 8 September. The arithmetic is unaffected, and so are servers already running, but if you are choosing a plan today read what is unavailable and what the orderable substitutes cost first. The CPX rows were orderable throughout.
All results below are [CALCULATED] from the official prices above. Unrounded values were used in the division; monthly costs are shown to two decimals and break-even points to one.
Basis A (documented billing basis) uses the server price excluding Primary IPv4. Basis B (marketing-card implied only) uses the displayed price including Primary IPv4; no invoice was checked.
| Plan | Server price (ex IPv4) | Listed price (incl. IPv4) | Backup A (billing docs) | Break-even A | Backup B (marketing card) | Break-even B | Public page status checked 1 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CX23 | €5.49 | €5.99 | €1.10 | 76.8 GB-mo | €1.20 | 83.8 GB-mo | Unavailable |
| CAX11 | €5.99 | €6.49 | €1.20 | 83.8 GB-mo | €1.30 | 90.8 GB-mo | Unavailable |
| CX33 | €8.49 | €8.99 | €1.70 | 118.7 GB-mo | €1.80 | 125.7 GB-mo | Unavailable |
| CPX22 | €19.49 | €19.99 | €3.90 | 272.6 GB-mo | €4.00 | 279.6 GB-mo | Available |
| CPX32 | €35.49 | €35.99 | €7.10 | 496.4 GB-mo | €7.20 | 503.4 GB-mo | Available |
On availability. On 1 Sep 2026, all eight plans shown on Hetzner’s EU cost-optimized page were marked “not available.” The three cost-optimized rows included in this article were among them. CPX22 and CPX32 on the regular-performance page were orderable when checked. Availability changes, so verify the required location in Hetzner Console before purchase.
What “compressed GB-month” means. It is the sum of the compressed stored size of every snapshot you are keeping, each counted for the share of the month it exists. It is not your disk’s advertised size, and it is not the size of one snapshot. Three snapshots of a server whose data compresses to 20 GB each, all kept for the whole month, is 60 GB-month, not 20.
What one, three and seven snapshots cost
Compression ratio is the input nobody can predict for you: a mostly-empty 40 GB disk might compress to 8 GB, a disk full of media might barely compress at all. So this table is indexed by compressed size per snapshot rather than by plan.
These examples assume each snapshot remains for a full month. Hetzner’s billing FAQ says: “If a Snapshot only exists for a fraction of a month, then we will only bill you for this fraction.” It does not say how the fraction is counted (by the hour or by the day) or which month length it uses, so a part-month figure here is a proportional estimate, not an invoice amount. For example, a 20 GB snapshot kept for a quarter of a month is about 5 GB-month, roughly €0.07 [CALCULATED]. With seven rolling snapshots, where you delete the oldest each time you take a new one, seven are stored once the set is full (eight for the moment between taking the new one and deleting the oldest), so the 7-snapshot column applies to them.
| Compressed size per snapshot | 1 snapshot | 3 snapshots | 7 snapshots |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 GB | €0.14/mo | €0.43/mo | €1.00/mo |
| 20 GB | €0.29/mo | €0.86/mo | €2.00/mo |
| 30 GB | €0.43/mo | €1.29/mo | €3.00/mo |
| 40 GB | €0.57/mo | €1.72/mo | €4.00/mo |
[CALCULATED] from €0.0143 per compressed GB-month.
Read it against the break-even table. Seven snapshots at 20 GB compressed cost €2.00 a month, which is more than a CX23’s backup fee but far less than a CPX32’s. The higher your server price relative to retained compressed data, the more attractive Snapshots become; the more snapshot storage you retain, the more attractive the percentage-based Backup fee becomes.
Backups vs Snapshots: operational differences
Price is the smaller half of this decision.
| Backups | Snapshots | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic or manual | Automatic, daily | Manual |
| Billing basis | 20% of server monthly price | €0.0143 per compressed GB-month |
| Retention and rotation | 7 slots; oldest deleted when a new one is created | Kept until you delete them; never rotated automatically |
| Survives server deletion | No, deleted with the server | Yes |
| Protection against accidental deletion | Not available | Available when you enable Snapshot protection |
| Attached Volumes included | No | No |
| Storage placement | Same location as the server, usually another data center or fire zone; same data center in Hillsboro and Singapore | Different location within the same network zone; same location in Ashburn, Hillsboro and Singapore |
| Database consistency | Not guaranteed on a running system | Not guaranteed on a running system |
| Independent copy outside Hetzner | No | No |
Hetzner documents the rotation plainly: after all seven Backup slots are occupied, creating another Backup removes the oldest one. Snapshots are not rotated or updated automatically.
Hetzner’s Backups and Snapshots FAQ also confirms that Backups cannot be protected from deletion, while Snapshot protection can be enabled.
On consistency, Hetzner recommends powering the server off before creating either type of image. Images can be created while a server is running, but Hetzner does not guarantee disk-data consistency in that case. This is the single most important operational caveat for anyone running a database.
What neither option protects
Both are disk-image copies held inside Hetzner. Specifically:
- Attached Volumes are not included. If your data lives on a Volume rather than the server’s own disk, neither feature captures it.
- Neither is provider-independent. Hetzner may store the copy in another data center or location, but both remain under the same Hetzner account and provider.
- Neither is database-aware. A disk copy taken while the server is running is not an application-level dump, and Hetzner says data consistency is not guaranteed.
- Backups die with the server. They are bound to it. Deleting the server deletes them.
- A backup plan is incomplete until you verify a restore. We have not restored or timed either feature, so this page makes no claim about restore duration or success rate.
If you need a backup strategy rather than only a rollback point, treat these features as one layer and keep an application-level database dump with a separately controlled provider.
Which option fits each workload
| Situation | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Unattended server, nobody remembers to click | Backups | Daily and automatic; nothing to forget |
| Small server, large disk that compresses badly | Backups | The 20% fee is capped by the server price, snapshot cost is not |
| Large or expensive server, small compressed data | Snapshots | The 20% fee scales with the server price you pay, not with your data |
| A restore point before an upgrade | Snapshots | Deliberate, timed by you, and not rotated away |
| A copy that must outlive the server | Snapshots | Backups are deleted with the server |
| A reusable image for new servers | Either | Hetzner allows a new server to be created from a Backup or Snapshot; a Snapshot is the practical long-lived template because it is not tied to the original server |
| Data on an attached Volume | Neither | Volumes are not included in either feature |
| A database you cannot lose | Neither alone | Add an application-level dump stored outside Hetzner |
If you are still choosing the server itself, our Hetzner price increase breakdown covers what changed on 15 June 2026, and Hetzner alternatives compares providers on the same terms. For sizing, see VPS price per GB of RAM and, for automation workloads specifically, our VPS plan comparison for n8n and n8n Cloud versus self-hosting costs.
Method, limitations, official sources and change log
Method. Prices were read on 1 Sep 2026 from Hetzner’s own documentation and public pricing pages, with the site’s currency selector on EUR and VAT display at 0%. On 13 Oct 2026 we re-read Hetzner’s 15 June 2026 price-adjustment notice (last changed 8 July 2026): the server prices excluding IPv4 used here still match it (CX23 €5.49, CAX11 €5.99, CX33 €8.49, CPX22 €19.49, CPX32 €35.49). That notice cannot show a change made after it, and Hetzner’s live pricing pages showed no prices to that read. The billing FAQ and Primary IP documentation were re-read the same day. Break-even points were computed as monthly backup cost divided by €0.0143, using unrounded inputs, then rounded for display. Every derived number is marked [CALCULATED].
Limitations.
- We did not verify prices against a real Hetzner invoice. The Backups base-amount discrepancy described above is unresolved for that reason.
- Hetzner’s server and Primary IP documentation confirms that Primary IPv4 costs €0.50 per month and is billed separately. The unresolved issue is why the public marketing card’s Backup starting price appears to include it.
- This comparison uses EU EUR pricing. Hetzner publishes separate USD amounts, which are not converted here or mixed with EU plan prices.
- Compression ratios are workload-specific. We measured none.
- Hetzner’s billing FAQ says a snapshot that exists for part of a month is billed for that fraction, but not how the fraction is counted. For Backups it gives “a monthly flat price” and does not say how a part month is billed, for example when Backups are switched on mid-month or the server is deleted. Every break-even point above assumes a full month on both sides.
- No restore was performed or timed.
Official sources.
- Cloud billing FAQ, 20% backup fee, compressed snapshot billing
- Cloud Servers overview, server prices exclude public IPs
- Primary IP overview, €0.50 Primary IPv4 price and separate billing
- Backups and Snapshots FAQ, seven slots, deletion behaviour, Volumes, consistency
- Backups and Snapshots overview, rotation, manual vs automatic
- Price adjustment notice, 15 June 2026, 8 AM CEST
- Cost-optimized Cloud plans, CX and CAX prices and availability
- Regular-performance Cloud plans, CPX prices, snapshot and backup rates
- Primary IP FAQ, Primary IPs are billed separately from cloud servers
Change log.
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| 1 Sep 2026 | First published. Prices checked against official pages the same day. |
| 8 Sep 2026 | Added the note on CX and CAX availability above the break-even table. |
| 13 Oct 2026 | Re-read Hetzner’s 15 June price-adjustment notice (the server prices excluding IPv4 used here still match it; the live pricing pages showed no prices) and the billing rules; the snapshot rate could not be re-read. Explained how part-month snapshots are billed and what Hetzner does not say about it. No price, formula or break-even point changed. |