Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scope of the change

  • US cloud VPS bandwidth included drops from 20TB to 1–8TB (often 1TB), while base prices also rise.
  • Overage in US remains very cheap (~$1/TB), and changes hit new instances immediately; existing ones switch in Feb 2025.
  • Applies only to US cloud regions; EU and (currently) dedicated servers keep old traffic terms.

Reactions to pricing and “fairness” rationale

  • Many see it as a bait‑and‑switch: 90–95% less included traffic plus price hikes, framed as helping low‑usage customers.
  • Several point out the stated logic (“low-usage users subsidize high-usage users”) would imply lowering prices for low‑usage customers, which did not happen.
  • Others argue the old offer was clearly unsustainable and attracted bandwidth-heavy abusers; this is a correction, not malice.
  • Some say the absolute increases (e.g., +€1–2/mo, +$12–19 for 20TB users) are manageable; others emphasize the % jump (400–500%) and short notice as unacceptable.

Regional bandwidth and infrastructure economics

  • Multiple comments note bandwidth and peering are cheaper and more competitive in Europe; US IXPs are often for‑profit and pricier.
  • Hetzner owns much of its EU network but colo’s/rents capacity in the US, making US traffic more transit-heavy and costly.
  • Some speculate US launch pricing was a “honeymoon” market‑share play that backfired once heavy users piled in.

Impact on use cases

  • High‑bandwidth workloads cited: DIY CDNs, VPNs, seedboxes/private torrenting, video/PeerTube, container registries, blockchain nodes, file APIs, backups.
  • Low‑traffic users mostly unaffected in practice but feel anxious about future flexibility, leading some to evaluate alternatives anyway.
  • A few consider shifting bandwidth-heavy workloads back to EU regions and accepting latency.

Comparisons to competitors

  • Even after the change, Hetzner’s $1/TB overage is described as 10–100× cheaper than major clouds’ egress.
  • Competitors named as alternatives or benchmarks: OVH (unmetered with caveats), DigitalOcean and Linode (pooled transfer but higher per‑TB), Hivelocity, others.

Communication, PR, and trust

  • Many criticize the very short notice (days for new instances), email‑only communication, and “fairness” framing as insulting or gaslighting.
  • Some argue this is the predictable downside of relying on unusually cheap, non‑contracted pricing; others say abrupt changes still erode trust.

Terminology: “Tariff”

  • Significant confusion in US readers who interpreted “tariff” as trade/import tax, not pricing plan.
  • Others note “tariff” meaning “price list/plan” is standard in German, UK, and Indian usage, so likely a translation/variety issue rather than political tariffs.