The core trade
Hetzner's prices come from running their own datacenters at scale, and part of keeping them low is vetting customers to keep abuse down. That vetting is why identity checks show up, not always at signup, but often enough that people plan around them. We wrote up what they actually ask for and when.
Going direct is cheaper, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. You pay us a margin over Hetzner's list price. What that margin buys is that the identity check was done once, by us, for our own account, and that you can pay in crypto, by the hour, from a balance instead of a card.
Side by side
| NoctHost | Hetzner | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | Hetzner (if you pick it) | Hetzner |
| Signup | Email only, no ID | Account, often ID verification |
| Payment | Crypto, prepaid balance, card optional | Card, SEPA / bank transfer, PayPal |
| Price | Hetzner's cost plus our margin | List price |
| Billing | Hourly from the balance | Hourly / monthly, invoiced |
| Whose account | Ours | Yours |
| Other clouds | Vultr and Linode on the same balance | Hetzner only |
Verification and payment policies change and vary by region. Check Hetzner's current signup flow before assuming. Our own region list is generated from live provider availability, so a Hetzner location that is temporarily out of capacity shows as unavailable rather than failing after you pay.
Pick Hetzner when
Absolute price-to-performance is your top priority, you want their dedicated root servers or storage boxes, which we do not resell, and being asked for an ID document is not a dealbreaker. For many legitimate, non-privacy-sensitive workloads, going direct is simply cheaper, and we have no argument against that.
Pick NoctHost when
The identity check is the dealbreaker, or a card is simply not something you want to put on file. You want to pay in crypto, keep your name off the account, and spin a machine up and down by the hour. You also get something going direct cannot give you: one balance across several clouds, so the same account deploys Hetzner in Europe and Vultr or Linode where Hetzner does not reach.
What it costs on NoctHost
Hourly plans from a prepaid, crypto-funded balance, Micro (1 vCPU, 1 GB) to Beast (6 vCPU, 16 GB), with no card and no ID. On the Hetzner backend the specs are generous for the tier, because their machines are: you are billed our plan price, not theirs. What you are paying for is the account layer, not a discount.