Hetzner vs AWS object storage: the 13x gap past 1 TB, and the two catches

Two object stores, both S3-compatible, priced 13x apart past 1 TB: Hetzner Object Storage at €35.53 ($41.43) against S3 Standard at $555.88 for 5 TB stored and 5 TB served, computed by the same cost engine that backs our comparison tool from prices captured 2026-09-01. Hetzner ranks 9th of 27 vendors at that workload; S3 ranks 25th. The gap is almost entirely egress: $441.00 of S3's $555.88 total is traffic. This piece prices both at five workloads, names the two catches that keep S3 in business, and shows the one workload where S3 wins outright.

The board at five workloads

Read the 0.1 TB row first, because it is the one that breaks the narrative: at 100 GB stored and served, S3 costs $2.19 against Hetzner's €6.49 ($7.57). S3's free tier (5 GB storage, 100 GB egress) covers most of a tiny workload and S3 has no base fee, while Hetzner's €6.49 floor applies whether you store 100 GB or a full terabyte. Past 1 TB the floor stops mattering and the per-unit rates take over: €6.26 against $23.00 per TB of storage, €1.00 against $90.00 per TB of egress. At 20 TB the monthly gap is $2,082.48 ($2,250.89 against $168.41).

The two catches, side by side

Catch one is geography. Hetzner's regions list is one entry long (EU: Germany and Finland), while S3 serves four continents. If your users or your residency requirements sit outside Europe, the 13x gap is not on offer. Catch two is the base fee: €6.49 a month buys the first terabyte whether you fill it or not, which is why S3's free tier wins the smallest workload outright. Everything else on the board favours Hetzner or ties: equal SLAs, equal eleven-9s durability, versioning and object lock on both sides.

When S3 still wins

• Under about 1 TB with light egress, where the free tier and the missing base fee decide it: $2.19 against €6.49 at the 0.1 TB workload above.
• Outside Europe, where Hetzner has no region and S3 has three continents of them.
• Inside the AWS ecosystem: S3 Intelligent-Tiering, Lambda event notifications, and the gold-standard API the whole industry clones. Hetzner's own ecosystem pitch is green Falkenstein datacenters and private peering, which is a different list for a different buyer.
• When the exit is priced in. Moving 20 TB out of S3 costs $1,800.00 in egress alone at $0.09 per GB, so an existing S3 estate pays a toll to leave that a greenfield project never faces.

Switching costs almost nothing, except the exit

Both sides speak the S3 API, so a move is a data copy, not a rewrite: same SDKs, same tooling, versioning and object lock available on both ends. The one bill for leaving is the egress row above, which is exactly why the workload board prices egress separately instead of folding it into a blended rate. Price the exit before you price the destination.

The honest summary: past 1 TB with real egress, Hetzner wins by 13x and the decision is residency and regions, not price. Under 1 TB, run your own numbers instead of trusting a headline multiple. The comparison tool recomputes this board for any workload, and our cheapest-storage piece ranks all 27 vendors for the workloads where neither of these two is the answer.