Why are Hetzner CX and CAX servers not available, and what can you order instead?
On 2 September 2026 every plan on Hetzner’s cost-optimized page, all eight CX and CAX servers, showed a not available badge with the Create button disabled. The CPX line was orderable the same day. The nearest CPX substitute costs 3.1x to 4.2x more for the same vCPU and RAM: CX23 €5.99 → CPX22 €19.99, CX43 €16.49 → CPX42 €69.99.
Key finding The lowest-priced Hetzner cloud server you could actually order was CPX12 at €11.99. The advertised €5.99 entry price belonged to a plan that could not be bought.
Prices verified 2 September 2026 against each vendor’s own pricing page, linked in full below.
KEY FINDING. On 2 September 2026, every plan on Hetzner’s cost-optimized page showed a “not available” badge with the Create button disabled. That is all eight CX and CAX plans, from CX23 up to CAX41. The CPX line was orderable the same day. Swapping to the nearest CPX plan with the same vCPU and RAM costs 3.1 to 4.2 times more per month: a CX23 replacement goes from €5.99 to €19.99, and a CX43 replacement goes from €16.49 to €69.99.
Availability and prices checked 2 September 2026, 12:04 UTC. EU pricing, including Primary IPv4, excluding VAT.
Answer in 30 seconds
If you came here because the Create button is greyed out, that is expected right now and it is not your account.
Hetzner’s cost-optimized line, the CX and CAX plans, is the cheap tier people usually mean when they say Hetzner is cheap. On the day this page was checked, none of it could be ordered. Hetzner’s own page says why, in general terms: the line runs on older hardware kept in service, and “this resource-saving use means that the number of available servers is limited.”
The line that is orderable is CPX. It is not a like-for-like substitute on price. For the same vCPU and RAM you pay roughly three to four times as much, and you get more disk than you asked for.
Three practical outcomes:
- You need a server today. CPX is the answer inside Hetzner, at the cost shown below. Budget for it properly rather than assuming the advertised €5.99 entry price.
- You can wait. Stock has returned before. Check the page yourself rather than trusting any article, including this one, on a date that has passed.
- Price is the binding constraint. Hetzner’s price advantage may no longer hold at your size, and the comparison moves outside Hetzner.
What was unavailable
Read from the cost-optimized plan page on 2 September 2026 at 12:04 UTC, with the site’s currency set to EUR and VAT display at 0%.
| Plan | vCPU | RAM | Disk | Listed price | Orderable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CX23 | 2 | 4 GB | 40 GB NVMe | €5.99 | No |
| CAX11 | 2 (Arm) | 4 GB | 40 GB NVMe | €6.49 | No |
| CX33 | 4 | 8 GB | 80 GB NVMe | €8.99 | No |
| CAX21 | 4 (Arm) | 8 GB | 80 GB NVMe | €10.99 | No |
| CX43 | 8 | 16 GB | 160 GB NVMe | €16.49 | No |
| CAX31 | 8 (Arm) | 16 GB | 160 GB NVMe | €21.49 | No |
| CX53 | 16 | 32 GB | 320 GB NVMe | see page | No |
| CAX41 | 16 (Arm) | 32 GB | 320 GB NVMe | see page | No |
Both architectures were affected: CX is Intel and AMD, CAX is Ampere Arm64. The plan card itself said “This product is currently unavailable. Please check back later.”
Prices are still shown on unavailable plans, which is what makes this confusing. A price on the page is not an offer you can accept.
What Hetzner says about it
The cost-optimized page describes the line as running on proven hardware generations that continue to be used, and then states the consequence directly:
“However, this resource-saving use means that the number of available servers is limited.”
That is a capacity statement, not a discontinuation notice. Hetzner has not announced that CX or CAX is being retired, and this page makes no such claim. What we can say from the page is narrow and dated: on 2 September 2026 the plans could not be ordered.
We did not find a public status page entry, changelog note or restocking estimate for this. If you need a commitment about future availability, that is a question for Hetzner support, not for a comparison site.
What you can order instead, and what it costs
The CPX line was fully orderable on the same day, all eleven plans. These are the nearest matches by vCPU and RAM.
| You wanted | Price | Nearest orderable | Price | Multiple | Extra per month | Extra per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CX23 (2 vCPU, 4 GB) | €5.99 | CPX22 (2 vCPU, 4 GB) | €19.99 | 3.3x | €14.00 | €168.00 |
| CAX11 (2 vCPU, 4 GB) | €6.49 | CPX22 (2 vCPU, 4 GB) | €19.99 | 3.1x | €13.50 | €162.00 |
| CX33 (4 vCPU, 8 GB) | €8.99 | CPX32 (4 vCPU, 8 GB) | €35.99 | 4.0x | €27.00 | €324.00 |
| CAX21 (4 vCPU, 8 GB) | €10.99 | CPX32 (4 vCPU, 8 GB) | €35.99 | 3.3x | €25.00 | €300.00 |
| CX43 (8 vCPU, 16 GB) | €16.49 | CPX42 (8 vCPU, 16 GB) | €69.99 | 4.2x | €53.50 | €642.00 |
| CAX31 (8 vCPU, 16 GB) | €21.49 | CPX42 (8 vCPU, 16 GB) | €69.99 | 3.3x | €48.50 | €582.00 |
Multiples and differences are [CALCULATED] from the listed prices above, unrounded then rounded for display.
In each pair the CPX plan ships more disk, so this is not purely a price increase for identical goods. It is, however, the real cost of the swap if what you needed was the vCPU and RAM.
The lowest-priced Hetzner cloud server you could actually order on 2 September 2026 was CPX12 at €11.99 for 1 vCPU and 2 GB. The advertised entry price of €5.99 belonged to a plan that could not be bought.
Should you wait or switch?
There is no universal answer, so here are the conditions.
| Your situation | Reasonable move |
|---|---|
| Existing CX or CAX server already running | Nothing. Unavailability affects new orders, not servers you already have |
| Deadline this week, price is flexible | Order CPX at the prices above |
| Deadline this week, price is fixed | Compare outside Hetzner. At €19.99 for 2 vCPU and 4 GB, Hetzner’s advantage narrows |
| Can wait, want the cheap tier specifically | Check the page periodically. Do not prepay elsewhere on an annual term for a wait that may be short |
| Building a cost model or a comparison | Use CPX prices as the orderable Hetzner floor and note the date |
One warning about long commitments: if you switch providers on a one or two year prepaid term because CX was unavailable this week, you have converted a temporary stock problem into a multi-year price commitment. Check the renewal price of anything you prepay.
One option the table does not cover, because it is not a like-for-like substitute: managed hosting on top of another cloud. If the reason you wanted the cheap tier was budget, this makes it worse, not better. If the reason was that you did not want to administer a server, it is the actual alternative. On Cloudways a 1 GB DigitalOcean server is $11 a month, against $6 for the same Droplet bought directly, and a multiple of any CX price. That is money traded for hours, quantified in managed hosting vs a VPS you run yourself, with the rate cards in Cloudways pricing.
How to check availability yourself
This is the part that stays useful after the date on this page expires. Do not trust any article, including this one, for current stock.
- Open the cost-optimized plan page.
- Set the currency selector to your currency and check whether VAT display is on or off. The prices change meaning between those settings.
- Look at the plan row, not the price. An unavailable plan still shows a price. Look for a “not available” badge next to the plan name and a disabled Create button.
- Check the location row. CX and CAX are EU-only products, offered at Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki. Availability can differ by location.
- If you have an account, the ordering screen in the Cloud Console is the authoritative check for your project and location.
If you want the same check for the orderable line, the regular-performance page lists CPX.
Method, limitations and sources
Method. Plan names, prices and availability badges were read directly from Hetzner’s public plan pages on 2 September 2026 at 12:04 UTC, with EUR selected and VAT display at 0%. Multiples and monthly and annual differences were computed from those listed prices.
Limitations.
- This is one observation at one time from one location. Availability can change within hours, and it can differ by datacenter location and by account.
- We did not test ordering. We read the public plan pages; we did not attempt a purchase to confirm the badge.
- CX53 and CAX41 prices are omitted above because we recorded their availability but not their prices in the same pass. Their availability status was the same.
- Hetzner has not published a reason specific to this date, nor a restock estimate. The quoted sentence about limited availability is general page copy, not an incident notice.
- Prices include the Primary IPv4 charge as displayed and exclude VAT. Our separate work on Hetzner backup pricing explains why that distinction matters when a fee is calculated as a percentage of the server price.
Sources.
- Hetzner cost-optimized Cloud plans, CX and CAX prices, availability badges and the limited-availability statement
- Hetzner regular-performance Cloud plans, CPX prices and availability
- Hetzner price adjustment notice, the 15 June 2026 change that set the current CX and CAX prices
Related reading. For what changed on 15 June, see our Hetzner price increase breakdown. For providers outside Hetzner on the same terms, see Hetzner alternatives. For per-unit comparison, see VPS price per GB of RAM, and for the backup fee that scales with the server price, Hetzner Backups versus Snapshots.
Change log.
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| 2 Sep 2026 | First published. Availability and prices checked the same day at 12:04 UTC. |
| 5 Sep 2026 | Added a paragraph on managed hosting as the alternative that is not like-for-like. No Hetzner price or availability finding changed. |