You picked Hetzner for the price. Now you need the layer managed, open-source, in Europe
Hetzner gives you cheap bare metal and VPS. It does not run your database, your monitoring, your backups or your private LLM for you. Bunker is the managed open-source layer that sits on top, hosted in France, under EU law.
Hetzner is one of the cheapest places in Europe to rent a server. ISO 27001 datacenters in Nuremberg, Falkenstein and Helsinki, dedicated machines and VPS at prices the hyperscalers cannot touch. If raw compute is what you need, it is hard to beat.
The gap shows up the day you need a production-grade PostgreSQL, real monitoring, backups you can trust, or a private LLM, and there is no one to operate any of it. That work lands on your team. Bunker does it for you, with the same open-source software you would have installed yourself, hosted in Europe and reversible if you ever want to bring it back in house.
Why teams pair Hetzner pricing with a managed layer
Flat, predictable pricing
No egress fees, no surprise line items at the end of the month. You pay for the managed service, not for the data leaving it. Pricing is published and stays the same whether you read once or a million times.
The same open-source stack you would run yourself
PostgreSQL, Redis, Prometheus, Grafana, Ceph S3, Matomo, Odoo. Nothing proprietary, nothing you cannot inspect. Bunker operates it, but the software is the same one your engineers already know.
Hosted in Europe, outside US extraterritorial law
Servers in France, operated by a European entity with no US presence. That puts your data outside the reach of the US Cloud Act and FISA 702, which is the part Hetzner gives you too, and AWS or Azure cannot.
Reversible, including away from us
Because the stack is standard open source, you can re-internalize it onto your own servers, or your own Hetzner machines, whenever you want. No lock-in toward Bunker either. The exit door stays open.
Bunker vs Hetzner, IONOS and AWS
| Criterion | Bunker | Hetzner | IONOS | AWS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed open-source stack (DB, monitoring, backups) | Included | Not provided | Partial, proprietary | Managed, proprietary |
| Raw compute price | Mid-range | Lowest | Low | Highest |
| Managed PostgreSQL | Yes, CloudNativePG | Self-managed only | Yes, proprietary | Yes, RDS |
| Private LLM hosting (Mistral, Llama, Qwen) | Yes | DIY on GPU servers | No | Bedrock, US-controlled |
| Jurisdiction | France, EU law only | Germany, EU law | Germany, EU law | US Cloud Act, FISA 702 |
| Egress fees | None | Capped traffic, then billed | Limited | Billed per GB |
| Vendor lock-in | None, re-internalizable | Low, raw infra | Moderate | High |
From a Hetzner box to a stack someone operates
The usual story goes like this. You spin up a Hetzner server, install PostgreSQL, point your app at it, and ship. It works. Then traffic grows, the database needs replication, backups need testing, you want metrics in Grafana and alerts that actually fire, and suddenly one of your engineers is spending half their week on infrastructure instead of product. Hetzner did exactly what it promised, it gave you a fast, cheap machine. The operational layer was never part of the deal.
Bunker picks up at that line. You get managed PostgreSQL on CloudNativePG, Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring, automated and verified backups, object storage on Ceph S3, and private LLMs like Mistral or Llama if you need inference that never leaves Europe. It runs on Kubernetes, it is the same open-source software you would have deployed by hand, and you can take it back onto your own infrastructure at any point. You keep the cost discipline that made Hetzner attractive, without owning the on-call rotation.
Next steps
How the same managed open-source stack replaces proprietary AWS services, with no egress fees and no Cloud Act exposure.
Host a private LLM in EuropeRun Mistral, Llama or Qwen on dedicated European infrastructure, with inference that stays under EU law.
Sovereign cloud, GDPR-nativeWhat sovereign hosting means in practice, and why a European operator changes your exposure to US extraterritorial law.
Frequently asked questions
Is Bunker more expensive than Hetzner?
For raw compute alone, Hetzner is cheaper, and we will not pretend otherwise. Bunker is priced for the managed layer on top: a database that is replicated and backed up, monitoring that is configured, an LLM that is served. If you would otherwise pay an engineer to run all of that, the comparison usually tilts the other way. And there are no egress fees, so the bill you see is the bill you pay.
Can I run Bunker on my own Hetzner servers?
Yes. Bunker comes in two forms: a fully managed sovereign cloud we operate for you, or the same open-source stack installed on infrastructure you own, including Hetzner dedicated machines. Because everything is standard open source on Kubernetes, moving between the two is a migration, not a rewrite.
How is the jurisdiction different from Hetzner?
It is similar, and that is the point. Hetzner is a German company with European datacenters, so it sits under EU law, not the US Cloud Act. Bunker is hosted in France and operated by a European entity with no US presence, which puts your data outside the reach of US extraterritorial law in the same way. The difference is what we add on top: a managed open-source stack, which Hetzner does not provide.
What happens if I want to leave Bunker?
You take your stack with you. The software is open source, your data is in standard formats like PostgreSQL dumps and S3 objects, and the deployment is plain Kubernetes manifests. You can re-internalize onto your own servers or move to another provider without rewriting your application. There is no lock-in toward Bunker by design.
Keep the Hetzner price discipline, drop the on-call
Tell us what you run today. We will map the managed open-source services that take the operations off your plate, hosted in Europe, reversible whenever you want.