netcup G12.5 price rise vs Hetzner: the new math

For years netcup was the cheap reference for a German VPS: 4GB of RAM for under €5 a month net. On 22 September 2026 it retired its Generation 12 lineup for new orders and replaced it with “G12.5”: the same vCPU and RAM, roughly 40% more money and half the disk. It was the company’s second increase this year, and it changes the old “netcup or Hetzner?” answer. Here are the numbers, read from netcup’s own price page on 2026-10-07.

Old G12 vs new G12.5 prices

Net of VAT, 12-month term — the basis netcup and most comparisons quote:

Three things changed at once. The price went up by about 40% on every x86 VPS size. The disk was cut in half — netcup says the new sizes follow what customers actually use. And the storage is now described as SSD rather than NVMe: still flash, but without the NVMe promise. Root servers (dedicated cores) were hit harder, with increases of 70–110%, and the small VPS Lite plans went up by up to 20% with unchanged specs. netcup’s CEO blamed memory: he wrote that the company’s RAM purchase prices are about five times what they were a year earlier.

This came on top of a first increase announced in March and applied from May 2026: +24.33% on new contracts, +18.51% on existing ones and +21.52% on storage. The G12 prices in the table are the last ones before G12.5, so they already include that May rise.

Existing customers: don’t cancel

The September change only applies to new orders. netcup said existing contracts keep their price, and that customers can upgrade within their current product at the old pricing. If you run a G12 server today, it is now cheaper than anything netcup will sell you. Cancelling it to “start clean” on a new account would cost you the 40%. (The May increase was different — it did raise existing contracts.)

What the term does to the price

netcup’s page shows the 12-month price and the month-to-month price; the 24-month figure follows from its stated 26% discount. Net of VAT:

A two-year VPS 500 comes to about €5.91 a month net — the closest you can get to the old price, still +19% above the G12 twelve-month price, and you pay for 24 months whatever happens. VAT-registered businesses can usually reclaim or reverse-charge the VAT; consumers pay the inclusive price at their own country’s rate.

netcup vs Hetzner at the same spec

Hetzner raised its own cloud prices earlier this year (see the Hetzner 2026 increase), so this is a comparison of two new price lists. Euros, net of VAT, same vCPU and RAM:

On compute alone, Hetzner is now the cheaper of the two at every size they both sell — by about a sixth at 4GB and over a third at 8GB and 16GB — and it bills by the hour with no term. That reverses the usual advice. Hetzner’s Arm CAX11 (2 vCPU / 4GB) at €6.49 is also cheaper than the netcup VPS 500 on a 12-month term.

Where netcup still has the edge:

• Disk per euro. Even halved, VPS 500 has 64GB against 40GB on a CX23 — about 9.2GB per euro against 6.7. If your workload is mostly storage (backups, media, a big Postgres), the gap in the table narrows.
• Traffic. netcup lists traffic as included with no per-TB meter; Hetzner includes 20TB per server in the EU and charges beyond it. For most sites 20TB is far more than needed.
• Availability. Hetzner’s x86 CX sizes have been intermittently out of stock in EU locations this year. If yours is affected, netcup is the nearest like-for-like German option.
• Bigger boxes. VPS 4000 (12 vCPU / 32GB) and VPS 8000 (16 vCPU / 64GB) have no same-spec Hetzner shared plan in our data set, so we don’t compare them here.

Who is cheap at 4, 8 and 16GB now — live

Cheapest plan with at least the given RAM, per VPS provider, in US dollars from our data set as of 2026-10-05. Lowest price per column in bold green. Watch the terms: OVHcloud’s prices need a 12-month commitment, Hostinger’s are introductory prices that renew higher, and netcup’s are the 12-month net price.

Price per GB of RAM

For memory-bound workloads — Postgres, Redis, a JVM, several containers on one box — the useful number is dollars per GB of RAM. The 12 cheapest plans with at least 4GB in our data set:

Promotional and prepaid prices sit at the top of this list, so read the notes column before you decide. Among plans billed by the hour or month with no promo, Hetzner is the one to beat; netcup’s G12.5 now sits behind it, and behind OVHcloud’s prepaid plans and Hostinger’s promos, rather than being the reference point.

What to do

• You already have a G12 (or older) netcup server: keep it, and upgrade in place if you need more — that keeps the old pricing.
• New small server, 4–16GB RAM: Hetzner’s CX or CAX line is cheaper and has no term. Compare Hetzner vs netcup stack by stack, or all netcup alternatives.
• Disk-heavy, steady workload you will run for years: netcup on a 24-month term is still competitive, especially if Hetzner’s CX sizes are out of stock in your location.
• Unsure whether you need a VPS at all: a managed platform costs more but removes the ops work — see Heroku vs Render vs Railway vs Fly for full bills, or managed Postgres pricing if the database is what you would put on the box.

Methodology: netcup G12.5 prices read from netcup.com on 2026-10-07(VAT-inclusive figures divided by 1.19; 24-month prices derived from the stated −26% discount, so marked ≈). Last G12 prices and old disk sizes from netcupvoucher.com’s G12.5 comparison, cross-checked against an independent review for VPS 1000. Change date and the statements on existing contracts and RAM costs from netcup’s CEO forum post of 22 September 2026, as reposted on LowEndTalk. Hetzner euro prices from our weekly check; the live tables use our data set as of 2026-10-05. netcup and Hetzner pay us nothing; affiliate links in the live tables (disclosed in the footer) never change the ordering.