Why are Hetzner CX and CAX servers not available, and what can you order instead?
On 2 and 8 September and again on 13 October 2026, Hetzner’s public cost-optimized page marked all eight CX and CAX plans as not available. CPX was shown as orderable on the public page on 2 September, and the nearest CPX substitute cost 3.1x to 4.2x more for the same vCPU and RAM: CX23 €5.99 → CPX22 €19.99, CX43 €16.49 → CPX42 €69.99 (2 September prices, EU, including Primary IPv4, excluding VAT).
Key finding Check your own project and location in the Cloud Console before planning around a CX price: on 2 September the cheapest Hetzner cloud server we saw as orderable was CPX12 at €11.99, while the €5.99 CX23 price was shown on a plan marked not available.
Prices verified 2 September 2026 against each vendor’s own pricing page, linked in full below.
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: on 2 September 2026 Hetzner’s public plan page itself marked every CX and CAX plan as not available, so it was not something about one account. We read the public pages only; we did not try to order from an account or check each location, and the Cloud Console’s order screen is the check that counts for your project.
Before you order, check these four things. 1. On the cost-optimized page, look at each plan row for a “not available” badge; a price is shown even on unavailable plans. 2. In the Cloud Console, confirm the plan is orderable for your project and location. 3. If it is not, price the nearest CPX plan on the regular-performance page and compare it with providers outside Hetzner. 4. Before prepaying elsewhere for a year or more, check the renewal price, because the shortage may be temporary. The full method is under “How to check availability yourself” below.
Hetzner’s cost-optimized line, the CX and CAX plans, is the cheap tier people usually mean when they say Hetzner is cheap. On 2 September 2026 Hetzner’s public page marked all of it as not available. 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 was orderable on 2 September was 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. On 2 September 2026 CPX was the orderable option inside Hetzner, at the cost shown below; check that it still is before you plan around it. Budget for it properly rather than assuming the advertised €5.99 entry price.
- You can wait. 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 public page marked the plans as not available, with the Create button disabled.
Re-checked 8 September 2026, and nothing had changed in six days. Hetzner’s main Cloud page then carried a “Currently not available” badge on the Cost-Optimized card itself, so this was visible without opening the console. The Regular Performance and General Purpose cards beside it carried no badge. On the cost-optimized page, all eight plans, CX23, CAX11, CX33, CAX21, CX43, CAX31, CX53 and CAX41, were marked as not available, each carrying the line “This product is currently unavailable. Please check back later.” The same page lists the line’s locations as eu-central, Nuremberg and Helsinki, so this is an EU-only tier to begin with. Six days was long enough to say the shortage was not a momentary blip, and short enough that it was still a shortage rather than a retirement.
Re-checked 13 October 2026, public pages only. Hetzner’s cost-optimized page still showed a “not available” badge on all eight CX and CAX plans. The regular-performance page read the same day showed that badge on none of its CPX plans, and it now also lists a CPX02 (1 vCPU, 1 GB) marked new, whose price we did not read. We read the pages’ own HTML, not the order screen; prices are filled in by the browser and were not re-read, so the prices on this page remain the 2 September figures.
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 could be ordered instead on 2 September 2026, and what it cost
On the same day, Hetzner’s public page showed all eleven CPX plans as orderable. 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 shown as orderable 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 the public page marked as not available that day.
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 | Check that CPX is still orderable and what it costs now, then order it (the prices above are from 2 September) |
| Deadline this week, price is fixed | Compare outside Hetzner. At €19.99 for 2 vCPU and 4 GB (2 September price), 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 the 2 September 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 when you looked, you may have turned a stock problem that could be temporary 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, or straight from Cloudways’ own price list (affiliate link, disclosed at the end of this page).
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.
- These are three readings of Hetzner’s public pages, on 2 and 8 September and 13 October 2026, each 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. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | Added one affiliate link, to Cloudways’ own price list, inside that managed hosting paragraph. Disclosed in the box below. No Hetzner price or availability finding changed. |
| 13 Oct 2026 | Tied the stock and ordering wording to the 2 and 8 September checks and removed an unsourced line about past restocks. No Hetzner price or availability finding changed. |
| 13 Oct 2026 | Added the 13 October public-page re-check, dated the title to the checks, limited the ordering wording to what the public page showed, and put a four-step check before ordering near the top. No Hetzner price changed. |
| 13 Oct 2026 | Worded the CPX sentence as what the public page showed on 2 September, and listed the three dated checks under Limitations. No Hetzner price or availability finding changed. |