Hetzner Bandwidth Limit

Does your website receive huge volumes of traffic? Looking for a host offering large bandwidth? Want to know more about the Hetzner bandwidth limit? If yes, you’re on the right page!

In this article, we’ll discuss in detail the bandwidth that Hetzner offers with its various servers. We’ll also talk about the bandwidth cost and ways to increase it.

Additionally, we’ll address most frequently raised queries about Hetzner bandwidth by the end of this article.

But first, let’s get an answer to our main question.

What is the Hetzner bandwidth limit?

On paper, Hetzner currently does not have a bandwidth limit. They used to have a large limit earlier allowing you to purchase additional bandwidth when exceeding the traffic limit.

Hetzner has removed this limit for all managed and dedicated root servers with 1 GBit uplink.

Since Hetzner provides you with unlimited outgoing traffic, you can expect not to experience any throttling. But there is a catch.

Keep in mind that Hetzner expects you to use your server resources, including bandwidth, along the lines of the normal operation for a website. Though the host has started advertising its bandwidth as unlimited, you actually cannot use all of it for your website.

All their claims of ‘unlimited bandwidth’ is only a marketing strategy around a technicality.

While Hetzner had a clear hard limit earlier, it still has a soft limit now that keeps a check on your monthly traffic based on the plan you purchase. Even if you have unlimited bandwidth, you can only use it to support a limited volume of traffic.

The consequences for going past the limit are different as well. Now, if you go beyond this set limit repeatedly, the host might just ban your account instead of charging you for using the extra bandwidth.

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How do I increase my Hetzner limit?

Hetzner provides unlimited bandwidth with all its servers. However, the host sets a monthly traffic limit with its plans.

The table below shows the Hetzner traffic limits for different servers:

Though the host has generous monthly traffic limits, you can still increase them further by upgrading to a different server type. And if you still cross the limit, Hetzner charges € 1 (or approximately $1.07) per TB that exceeds the limits listed above.

Hetzner bandwidth cost

Hetzner bills its customers only for outgoing traffic. They don’t charge you for internal and incoming traffic. To give you more clarity, this is what the host terms as internal traffic:

• Traffic coming from the public IPs of other Hetzner Cloud servers in the same network zone.
• Traffic that comes in the form of private communications from other Hetzner Cloud servers using the Networks feature provided by the host.
• The traffic of dedicated root servers from Hetzner Online.
• Traffic from web hosting packages, services, and other servers of Hetzner Online.

So all traffic coming from the above-listed sources is completely free.

Hetzner will bill you based only on the outgoing traffic from your server which includes:

• Traffic received from public IPs of other Hetzner Cloud servers in different network zones (US-East, US-West, and EU-Central).

Additionally, it is important to repeat that all Hetzner packages include only a finite amount of traffic for a calendar month. The host will charge you for every TB used over and above this limit.

For calculation purposes, Hetzner rounds up your usage to a full TB even if you consume a smaller fraction. For instance, if your server plan includes 10 TB traffic and you use 11.6 TB, Hetzner will charge for 2 TB of over-usage.

As mentioned earlier, the host charges € 1 (or approximately $1.07) for each additional TB you use.

Hetzner bills via two methods, via a fixed monthly price cap or an hourly billing option. Servers are equipped with both, and at the end of the month, they charge you for the lesser amount between these two options.

Essentially, if the number of hours you use the server costs less than their fixed plan, they will only charge you for the hours you’ve used. However, this is only in the case that you’ve used the server for the full month.

If you use a Hetzner server for a few days only and delete your cloud server to stop the billing process, the host will charge you based on the hourly rate.

It is important to keep track of your server traffic to manage your monthly bandwidth costs well. Hetzner regularly notifies you about your traffic usage, including upon consuming 75% of your free plan traffic and also when you exhaust all of it.

It is also possible to check your traffic usage from Robot, the host’s server administration panel, where you can track daily, monthly, and even yearly traffic usage for your selected IPs.

Using Robot, you can check if you are very close to exhausting Hetzner bandwidth limit.

You can also activate traffic warnings from the Robot panel by setting custom limits as you need in the IPs tab. It helps you in the periods when your server receives irregular peaks of traffic.

Hetzner routers determine the traffic usage only after disconnecting a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection. They display the traffic volume as a peak during disconnection if a TCP connection remains established for several hours.

Conclusion

Though Hetzner used to provide limited bandwidth earlier, it now offers unlimited bandwidth with all its servers. However, you still need to keep in mind that there is a soft limit to the use of server resources.

You will have to consume server bandwidth consistent within the normal operation constraints of a website to avoid getting banned. At the same time, the host sets different traffic limits for different servers.

The exhaustion of these bandwidth limits depends on the kind of website you will be running. If your site receives a lot of visitors and you exceed your plan limit repeatedly, you can either go for a higher plan or purchase additional traffic at € 1 per additional TB.

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FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Does Hetzner charge hourly?

Hetzner has both monthly and hourly billing options. It bills you either for the hourly rate multiplied by the number of hours you use your server or the monthly price cap, whichever amount is lower.

For hourly billing, It’s important to note that the host bills you for a full hour even if you utilize your server for only a few minutes.

How much bandwidth does a Hetzner server use?

Hetzner servers come with unlimited bandwidth and a dedicated 1 GBit uplink. Its root servers with 10 GBit uplink include 20 TB monthly traffic.

Full racks from Hetzner offer 10 TB bandwidth while Cloud servers include 20 to 60 TB, depending on the plan you purchase.

Is there a data limit on Hetzner?

Yes, Hetzner sets a monthly data limit for traffic received by your server. It varies by the server you choose and the plan you buy from the hosting provider.

However, it is possible to go beyond this limit by purchasing additional units for extra data transfer. The host charges about €1 or $1.07 for each additional TB your server utilizes.