Contabo VPS pricing in Europe (2026) vs Hetzner & OVH for a VPN

The short answer: for a self-hosted VPN VPS in Europe, Contabo gives the most RAM and storage per euro (the value default), Hetzner is the pick for premium reliability and fast EU latency, and OVH fits if you want French datacenters or its ecosystem. Choose Contabo to save money, Hetzner if you'll pay a bit more for polish. Current prices and a 12-axis comparison are below.

You want to stand up a self-hosted VPN in Europe. You've read the WireGuard guides, your wg0.conf is ready, all you need is the VPS. Three names keep showing up: Contabo, Hetzner, OVH. All European, all GDPR, all under €10/month. But which one should you pick to run a WireGuard tunnel?

This comparison is built on the three hosts' public specs and pricing, their datacenter locations, and the general reputation of each network. No inflated spec sheet - just a clear decision framework to pick the right VPS for your profile. Contabo VPS pricing below was read from contabo.com in June 2026 (list prices, 12-month term, excl. VAT). Prices, plan names and promos change regularly, so always confirm the current figure at purchase on the official sites.

Contabo VPS pricing in Europe - June 2026

Contabo renamed its lineup to Cloud VPS 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 … (the old "VPS S / M / L" labels are retired). Here are the current European list prices read from contabo.com in June 2026 - monthly rate on a 12-month subscription, excl. VAT, no setup fee:

For a self-hosted WireGuard VPN, the entry Cloud VPS 10 at €5.50/month is plenty: WireGuard encryption is light on CPU, so 4 vCPU and 8 GB RAM leave ample headroom to also run a Bitwarden or a small Nextcloud. You only move up to Cloud VPS 20/30 if you stack several services or need the wider 300–600 Mbit/s port.

See the current Contabo Cloud VPS offer - our default pick for a Europe VPN VPS.

Comparison criteria (12 axes)

For a comparison to be useful, it needs a framework. Here are the 12 criteria to evaluate for a self-hosted VPN use case:

1. Monthly price - actual cost incl. tax, and any commitment term
2. CPU / RAM - to sustain WireGuard encryption under load
3. Advertised bandwidth - port speed, and whether it's guaranteed or burst
4. Datacenter / latency - proximity to the end user (closer DC = lower RTT)
5. GDPR jurisdiction - hosting country and corporate HQ
6. Traffic quota - monthly cap or unmetered
7. IPv6 included - /64 or /48 block provided
8. Snapshots / backups - cost and frequency
9. Panel quality - usability, API, Terraform provider
10. Support - channel (email/chat), languages, responsiveness
11. Availability (uptime) - published SLA and reliability reputation
12. IP reputation - shared ASN, blacklist presence (Spamhaus, AbuseIPDB)

Contabo Cloud VPS 10 - unbeatable price/performance

Price: €5.50/month (Cloud VPS 10 list price, contabo.com read June 2026, 12-month term, excl. VAT). Check the exact current price on contabo.com - promos and VAT move the figure.

Advertised specs: 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 75 GB NVMe (or 150 GB SSD), 200 Mbit/s port, unlimited unmetered traffic (fair-use). Main datacenter: Nuremberg (DE), German jurisdiction, strict GDPR.

What we like

• Very aggressive price/specs ratio. At €5.50/month, 4 vCPU and 8 GB RAM with a 200 Mbit/s port is hard to beat in Europe - it's Contabo's long-standing signature (lots of resources for cheap).
• Unlimited unmetered traffic (fair-use). For personal VPN use (5-10 devices) you never come close to the fair-use ceiling. No per-TB overage surprise.
• Snapshots available from the panel (low-cost paid option depending on plan).
• Clean ASN 51167. Generally decent network reputation, usually no systematic Cloudflare challenge.

What we like less

• Dated panel. Less modern interface, limited public API, no official Terraform provider - less pleasant than Hetzner Cloud for infra-as-code.
• Email support, no live chat. Replies mostly in EN/DE, FR rare.
• Activation not always instant after payment (order verification).
• Shared hardware on the Cloud VPS tier. On the entry Cloud VPS 10, CPU is shared. Not critical for WireGuard but noticeable if you also run CI builds.

Hetzner Cloud CX22 - premium German quality

Price: around €5/month (CX22), billed hourly, no commitment. Check the exact price on hetzner.com.

Advertised specs: 2 vCPU AMD, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe, 20 TB traffic/month included. Datacenters in Nuremberg, Falkenstein, Helsinki, plus Ashburn (US) and Hillsboro (US).

What we like

• One of the cleanest panels on the market. Modern interface, mature REST API, official Terraform provider. Fast provisioning via hcloud server create.
• Hourly billing. Create, test, destroy: you only pay for the hours used. Ideal for iterating on your WireGuard config.
• NVMe storage. Hetzner has a reputation for consistent disk and network performance.
• Strong reliability reputation (Hetzner publishes a cloud SLA).
• Ticket support known to be responsive, in EN/DE notably.

What we like less

• 20 TB/month quota. Beyond that, overage billing applies per the terms. Less generous than Contabo's unlimited (fair-use) traffic.
• Paid snapshots (billed per GB/month per Hetzner's pricing).
• Strict anti-fraud at signup. First account often demands ID verification; signing up via Tor often leads to a refusal.
• No-commitment pricing: competitive, but over the long run Contabo on a long commitment can come out slightly cheaper for comparable specs.

OVH VPS Value - the French-latency choice

Price: around €3.50/month excl. VAT (VPS Value), roughly €4/month incl. tax depending on VAT. Monthly or annual commitment. Check the exact price on ovhcloud.com.

Advertised specs: 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 20 GB SSD, 100 Mbps, unmetered traffic. Datacenters Roubaix (RBX), Strasbourg (SBG), Gravelines (GRA), plus Beauharnois (BHS) in Canada.

What we like

• Top French latency. For a user in France, a DC in Roubaix, Strasbourg or Gravelines is geographically much closer than Nuremberg, which meaningfully lowers RTT. That's OVH's main selling point for a French audience.
• Unmetered traffic. No monthly volume cap. (The port bandwidth is still 100 Mbps though.)
• Native FR support. It's OVH, support speaks French during business hours.
• French jurisdiction. A French host subject to GDPR, interesting if you want to favour European sovereignty.

What we like less

• Modest specs. 1 vCPU and 2 GB RAM is just enough for solo WireGuard. Add Nextcloud + Bitwarden and it may swap.
• 100 Mbps only. Half of Contabo's port. Fine for personal use, but you hit the ceiling faster with several simultaneous clients.
• Complex "Manager" panel. Inherited from the OVH ecosystem, unintuitive for a newcomer: many clicks for a simple action.
• Historical incidents. The March 2021 SBG2 fire marked everyone. OVH has since evolved its infra, but perception lingers.
• ASN 16276 with a mixed reputation. OVH has historically hosted a lot of abuse, so Cloudflare and reCAPTCHA may challenge you more often than on a cleaner network.

Comparison table - 12 criteria

VPS catalogues in 2026: notable lineup moves

VPS catalogues change regularly: new SKUs, price adjustments. Here are the notable lineup developments in 2026, always to confirm on the official sites (the figures below are public ballparks, not dated readings).

Contabo: the Storage VPS line

Contabo offers Storage VPS plans aimed at mixed "VPN + media server" use cases, with lots of storage (from several hundred GB to multiple TB of SSD/NVMe depending on the tier), more RAM and a wider port than the base Cloud VPS 10. For pure VPN use it's overkill. But if you also host a Jellyfin or a Nextcloud with a large media library, the storage/€ ratio is among the best on the market - that's Contabo's long-standing positioning. Note: Ubuntu Server images may ship with unattended-upgrades disabled; remember to re-enable it after install (sudo dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades).

Hetzner: dedicated CCX tiers and ARM (CAX)

Hetzner offers dedicated-CPU (CCX) tiers and an ARM Ampere (CAX) line, on top of the shared CX. The ARM tiers offer good perf/price for compilation, Docker builds or light inference. For a pure WireGuard VPN the benefit is nil: WireGuard encryption uses very little CPU, so any small tier is plenty. Worth knowing if you go ARM: on some images (e.g. Debian) the WireGuard tooling may need a manual build, whereas recent Ubuntu images bundle the module; Tailscale ARM works out of the box.

OVH: entry-level VPS lineups

OVH regularly adjusts its entry VPS lineups (Value/Essential depending on the period), around 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 100 Mbps unmetered, datacenters RBX/SBG/GRA. It's competitive for a solo VPN (1-2 devices), but the specs stay tight to bonus-host a Bitwarden or an Umami.

Section verdict: Contabo stays our default pick for specs/price, but a Storage VPS becomes relevant as soon as you mean "VPN + storage". Hetzner's dedicated/ARM tiers are tempting for devs but overkill for pure VPN use. OVH stays competitive on the entry tier without changing the verdict for the "serious self-hoster" profile.

Lineup ballparks (verify on the official sites)

Which datacenter for fibre in Paris?

Recurring question: "I have 1 Gbps symmetric fibre at home in Paris - which datacenter minimises latency?". Here the deciding factor is purely geographic: the closer the datacenter is to you, the lower the RTT (round-trip). You can verify this yourself before buying with a simple ping or mtr to the test IPs each host publishes.

Proximity logic for a user based in Paris:

• OVH Roubaix / Gravelines: these are the closest datacenters to Paris among the three hosts - lowest latency.
• OVH Strasbourg: also close, slightly farther than Roubaix.
• Contabo Düsseldorf and Hetzner Falkenstein/Nuremberg: in Germany, so a notch higher in RTT, but still perfectly acceptable for most uses.
• Hetzner Helsinki: the farthest, best reserved if you also target Nordic users.

Practical takeaway: if latency really matters to you (competitive gaming, low-latency trading, heavy video calls) from France, a French OVH datacenter (Roubaix/Gravelines) is the logical pick thanks to geographic proximity. For general-purpose use (streaming, browsing, remote work), a German DC like Contabo Düsseldorf at the Cloud VPS 10 price stays perfectly comfortable. Measure the RTT to each DC from your own connection before deciding - that's the only way to get reliable numbers for YOUR case.

Verdict by profile

You're starting self-hosting → Contabo Cloud VPS 10

€5.50/month (June 2026), 200 Mbit/s, 8 GB RAM to bonus-host Bitwarden or Nextcloud. Dated panel that works. Many WireGuard tutorials across the web use Contabo as the example. Safest default. We cover it in detail in the Contabo WireGuard setup guide.

You're an advanced dev, you want infra-as-code → Hetzner CX22

REST API + Terraform provider = commit your config to Git, terraform apply, your VPN is up in 30 seconds. Ideal for rebuilding after an incident. You trade €4 extra per month for a clean panel and a modern stack.

Critical FR latency (gaming, finance) → OVH VPS Value

If you play competitive FPS or trade at low latency from France, the RTT gap between a French DC (Roubaix) and a German DC (Nuremberg) matters. Geographic proximity makes OVH the logical pick. Tolerate the clunky panel and more frequent Cloudflare CAPTCHAs.

Multi-tenant, multiple services in parallel → Hetzner CX32 or Contabo Cloud VPS 20/30

If you host 3+ services (VPN + Nextcloud + Plex + git) jump to the higher tier. Contabo Cloud VPS 20 (€7.50/mo, 6 vCPU / 12 GB) or VPS 30 (€14/mo, 8 vCPU / 24 GB), or Hetzner CX32. The price/performance balance tips back to Contabo as soon as you scale RAM. Check exact prices on the official sites.

Methodology & sources

This comparison is built on the three hosts' public specs and pricing, their datacenter locations and the public reputation of their networks (ASN). It does not include first-hand throughput/latency/uptime measurements: for reliable numbers specific to your connection, test latency yourself (ping/mtr to each host's test IPs) and bandwidth (iperf3) before committing. Useful resources to check IP reputation:

• ASN reputation / blacklists: Spamhaus DROP, AbuseIPDB, Talos Intelligence

Official sources:

• Contabo VPS specs
• Hetzner Cloud pricing
• OVH VPS Value
• RFC 9293 - TCP for theoretical throughput calculations
• GDPR - Regulation (EU) 2016/679

Further reading

• Self-host VPN on Contabo: complete WireGuard guide 2026
• GDPR cloud hosting: alternatives to AWS in 2026
• WireGuard vs OpenVPN on VPS: real benchmarks 2026
• Interactive VPS comparator - filter Contabo, Hetzner and OVH side by side by latency, RAM and 24-month price in a single interactive view
• WireGuard config generator - once you've picked your provider, generate a production-ready wg0.conf in under a minute

Disclosure: VPNSmith earns an affiliate commission if you pick Contabo via our links. It did not influence the verdict - Hetzner and OVH don't have an active affiliate program with us, we recommend them just the same when they're the right call. The prices quoted are public ballparks: always check the exact current price on the official sites before buying.