Google Cloud Platform is one of the three large US hyperscalers, alongside AWS and Azure. The infrastructure is technically excellent, and the service portfolio – BigQuery, Vertex AI, GKE – is industry-leading in many areas. But for DACH companies handling personal data, the fundamental problem remains: Google LLC is a US company, subject to the CLOUD Act, and processes data under US jurisdiction – including in its Frankfurt data center. Hetzner is a German GmbH, entirely under EU law. This comparison breaks down cost, performance, services, and compliance in detail.
Cost comparison: Hetzner vs. Google Cloud
GCP is cheaper than AWS, but considerably more expensive than Hetzner. The E2 series (Google's cost-optimized instances) offers GCP's best price/performance ratio – yet it still costs a multiple of Hetzner.
Compute (compared by RAM tier)
Hetzner shared-vCPU instances (CX series) share physical CPUs. GCP's E2 series likewise uses shared resources (e2-medium), while e2-standard and n2-standard offer dedicated cores. The comparison shows both vCPU counts transparently: Hetzner Cloud: current price list GCP Compute Engine: current price list
| RAM tier | Hetzner (shared vCPU) | GCP E2 (On-Demand) | Factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 GB | CX23: 2 vCPU – €5.49/month | e2-medium: 2 vCPU – ~€28/month | 5.1x |
| 8 GB | CX33: 4 vCPU – €8.49/month | e2-standard-2: 2 vCPU – ~€55/month | 6.5x |
| 16 GB | CX43: 8 vCPU – €15.99/month | e2-standard-4: 4 vCPU – ~€111/month | 6.9x |
| 32 GB | CX53: 16 vCPU – €29.49/month | e2-standard-8: 8 vCPU – ~€222/month | 7.5x |
If you need higher CPU consistency on GCP (N2 series), you pay even more:
| RAM tier | Hetzner (dedicated) | GCP N2 (On-Demand) | Factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 GB | CCX23: 4 vCPU – €85.99/month | n2-standard-4: 4 vCPU – ~€161/month | 1.9x |
| 32 GB | CCX33: 8 vCPU – €138.49/month | n2-standard-8: 8 vCPU – ~€322/month | 2.3x |
Storage and traffic
| Resource | Hetzner | GCP |
|---|---|---|
| Block storage (SSD) | €0.057/GB/month | pd-ssd: ~€0.180/GB/month |
| Block storage (balanced SSD) | – | pd-balanced: ~€0.106/GB/month |
| Included traffic | 20 TB/month (EU locations) | 200 GB/month (Standard Tier, free) |
| Egress 0–1 TB | €1/TB (beyond the included volume) | ~€106/TB |
| Egress 1–10 TB | €1/TB | ~€97/TB |
Worked example: a typical SaaS workload
A mid-sized SaaS product with 2 app servers, 1 database server, 500 GB of storage, and 5 TB of monthly egress traffic:
| Line item | Hetzner | GCP |
|---|---|---|
| 2x app servers (16 GB RAM) | 2× CX43: €31.98 | 2× e2-standard-4: €222.00 |
| 1x database server (16 GB RAM) | 1× CCX23 (self-hosted PostgreSQL): €85.99 | Cloud SQL (4 vCPU / 16 GB): ~€254.00 |
| 500 GB block storage | €28.60 | pd-balanced: €53.00 |
| 5 TB egress traffic | €0.00 (within the included volume) | ~€493.00 |
| Monthly total | ~€147 | ~€1,022 |
| Annual cost | ~€1,759 | ~€12,264 |
That works out to a factor of ~7x – driven mainly by GCP egress costs and pricier managed services. GCP: Cloud SQL Pricing
Performance benchmarks
GCP delivers excellent network performance thanks to Google's own fiber backbone. For pure compute workloads within the EU, Hetzner delivers comparable performance at a fraction of the cost.
| Metric | Hetzner | GCP |
|---|---|---|
| Network latency (intra-DC) | Very good (~0.3 ms) | Very good (~0.2 ms) |
| Disk I/O (SSD) | Good (Hetzner local NVMe) | Variable (pd-ssd, network-attached) |
| CPU consistency | High (dedicated CCX series) | High (N2 series) |
| Network throughput | Up to 10 Gbit/s | Up to 32 Gbit/s (expensive instances) |
| Global backbone | Public internet | Own fiber network (Premium Tier) |
Sovereignty and compliance
The structural difference is the same as with AWS – GCP is a US company. The legal details on the CLOUD Act and the risk to EU data apply here just as much:
| Kriterium | Hetzner | GCP |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Hetzner Online GmbH, Gunzenhausen (DE) | Google LLC, Mountain View (US) |
| CLOUD Act exposure | None – not under US jurisdiction | Full – US parent company |
| GDPR compliance | Native – EU law only | Legal conflicts with US law |
| BSI C5 attestation | Yes – Type 2 (since March 2026) | Yes (since 2018) |
| ISO 27001 | Yes | Yes (+ ISO 27017, 27018, 27701) |
| EU data centers | Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki | Frankfurt, Berlin, Zurich, and more (11+ EU regions) |
| Data centers worldwide | 6 locations, 3 continents | 40+ regions, global |
| Sovereign cloud option | Native – German GmbH | Google Distributed Cloud with T-Systems (surcharge) |
| Data processing | EU law applies exclusively | US law can override GDPR |
Google's sovereign-cloud answer: the T-Systems partnership
With Google Distributed Cloud Hosted (operated by T-Systems), Google offers a sovereign cloud option: T-Systems acts as the data trustee, and Google has no access to customer data or encryption keys. Google Distributed Cloud
It sounds good – but it comes with caveats:
- Significantly more expensive than standard GCP (a surcharge for T-Systems operation)
- Limited service portfolio – not all GCP services are available
- Added complexity – another contractual party in the stack
- Limited availability – primarily for the public sector and regulated industries
For most DACH SMEs, Hetzner is the simpler and cheaper route to EU data sovereignty – without third-party constructs.
Where GCP is the better choice
A fair comparison has to acknowledge where GCP holds genuine advantages:
- BigQuery: A serverless, petabyte-scale data warehouse. For data-intensive companies, this is often the main reason to choose GCP. Hetzner offers nothing comparable – you would have to run ClickHouse or Apache Spark yourself.
- Vertex AI and Gemini: Google's ML platform with access to Gemini models, AutoML, and TPU accelerators. For AI/ML workloads, GCP has one of the strongest offerings on the market.
- GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine): Widely regarded as the best managed Kubernetes service. Autopilot mode, built-in service mesh, Binary Authorization. Hetzner offers basic managed K8s, but without that depth.
- Cloud Run: Serverless container execution with scale-to-zero. Ideal for microservices and APIs. No Hetzner equivalent.
- Global network: Google operates one of the largest private fiber networks in the world. Premium Tier networking routes traffic over Google's backbone – lower latency worldwide than public internet peering.
- Cloud CDN: Caches at more than 100 locations worldwide, integrated with load balancing. Hetzner has no CDN.
- Data analytics stack: Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Looker – an end-to-end analytics stack that you would have to build entirely yourself on Hetzner. GCP: full overview of products and services
Where Hetzner is the better choice
- Price/performance: Roughly 2–8x cheaper depending on configuration – even with GCP's Sustained Use Discounts.
- Predictable costs: No egress-pricing shock. 20 TB of traffic included, then €1/TB instead of ~€106/TB.
- EU data sovereignty: No CLOUD Act, no FISA 702, no US parent company. Structurally GDPR-compliant – without costly sovereign-cloud constructs.
- Simplicity: Fewer services, but the essential ones (compute, storage, load balancer, DNS, firewall) work reliably and are configured in minutes.
- Transparent billing: Fixed monthly prices instead of usage-based billing with SUDs, CUDs, and dozens of cost dimensions.
- SSD storage costs: Hetzner Block Storage costs €0.057/GB – GCP pd-ssd costs €0.180/GB (3.2x more). Hetzner Cloud: pricing and features
When to choose which provider
Choose Hetzner if:
- GDPR compliance and data sovereignty are business-critical
- the budget is limited and predictable costs matter more than a broad managed-service catalog
- the tech stack is built on proven open-source tools (PostgreSQL, Redis, Node.js, Go)
- the target audience is primarily in the DACH region / EU
- no data-warehouse or ML-platform services are required
Choose GCP if:
- BigQuery, Vertex AI, or other GCP-native data services are core components of the architecture
- global scaling on Google's premium network is required
- GKE Autopilot is indispensable for complex Kubernetes workloads
- managed databases (Cloud SQL, Spanner, Firestore) with automatic failover are required
- US law poses no compliance problem (e.g. US customers, no EU personal data)
The reality for most DACH SMEs: You need compute, a database, storage, and good support – not a petabyte data warehouse or an ML platform. For 95% of mid-market SaaS workloads, Hetzner is the better choice both economically and from a regulatory standpoint.
In a free initial consultation, we analyze your current GCP infrastructure and calculate the savings potential. We deliver the full migration and hardening to EU-sovereign Hetzner infrastructure at a fixed price of €36,000 – with a working application as the result, not just a migration plan.
Frequently asked questions
How much cheaper is Hetzner than Google Cloud?
Is Google Cloud Frankfurt subject to the CLOUD Act?
What is Google Distributed Cloud with T-Systems?
When is GCP still the better choice?
How high are GCP egress costs by comparison?
Can AnvilStack help with a GCP migration?
Sources
- Hetzner Cloud: current price list (following the price adjustment of 15 June 2026)
- GCP Compute Engine: price list (2026)
- GCP europe-west3 Frankfurt: instance pricing and availability
- GCP: Network Egress Pricing
- GCP: Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL Pricing
- Hetzner: included traffic volume and overage costs
- Hetzner: Block Storage / Cloud Volumes
- Hetzner: data privacy FAQ – GDPR and data processing
- Hetzner: BSI C5 attestation Type 2 (March 2026)
- GCP: BSI C5 Attestation
- Google Distributed Cloud (Sovereign Cloud with T-Systems)
- GCP: full overview of all products and services
- BSI C5: Cloud Computing Compliance Criteria Catalogue