Hetzner vs Oracle ARM VPS Performance Comparison
Benchmark comparison between Hetzner ARM and Oracle free-tier ARM servers. Disk, CPU, network, and WordPress performance side by side.
Oracle Cloud gives you a free ARM server with 4 vCPUs and 24 GB of RAM on their always-free tier. Hetzner’s ARM servers cost €11.99/month for the CAX31 (4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM), rising to €15.99/month from April 2026 due to Hetzner’s price increases. Both run on Ampere Altra processors. I ran both through the same benchmark suite to see how they actually compare.
Hetzner ARM pricing
Hetzner’s ARM instances are cheaper than their Intel and AMD equivalents. The CAX31 (4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM) is €11.99/month vs ~€16.49/month for the equivalent x86 CPX31. Available in Germany and Finland datacenters. From April 2026, the CAX31 goes up to €15.99/month.
Benchmark results
Oracle (4 vCPU, 24 GB RAM — free tier)
Hetzner CAX31 (4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM — €11.99/month)
What the numbers show
CPU: Nearly identical. Oracle scored 1102 single-core and 3670 multi-core on Geekbench 6. Hetzner scored 1064 single-core and 3376 multi-core. Same processor, similar results.
Disk: Hetzner wins decisively. Read speeds up to 2.52 GB/s vs Oracle’s 55 MB/s. Oracle’s free tier runs on shared NFS-backed storage, which explains the gap.
Network: Hetzner is faster and has lower latency to European endpoints. Oracle’s free tier network is throttled.
The CPU performance is comparable, but everything else about Hetzner’s server is faster.
WordPress on Hetzner ARM
WordPress runs well on ARM. The WordPress benchmark scores are above 8, which is the threshold for good performance, and the GTMetrix results show fast real-world page loads. I’ve moved several WordPress sites to Hetzner ARM without any compatibility issues.
What to run on ARM
Most software supports ARM now. On these servers you can run:
- WordPress via CloudPanel (same install process as x86)
- Any Docker container built for ARM (Plausible, Uptime Kuma, Grafana, etc.)
- Node.js applications
- Python apps
The main thing to watch is whether third-party software you depend on has ARM builds. Most popular open source projects do.
Quick comparison
| Oracle Free Tier | Hetzner CAX31 | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 4 vCPU (Ampere A1) | 4 vCPU (Ampere Altra) |
| RAM | 24 GB | 8 GB |
| Disk | ~50 GB (shared NFS, slow) | 80 GB NVMe (fast) |
| Disk read speed | ~55 MB/s | ~2.5 GB/s |
| Price | Free | €11.99/mo (€15.99 from Apr 2026) |
| Network | Throttled | Fast, low latency in EU |
| Best for | Testing, low-traffic projects | Production WordPress, databases |
Which to choose
If the Oracle free tier is enough for your workload and you don’t need fast disk IO, it’s free and worth using. For anything that requires consistent disk performance, a busy WordPress site, a database, or heavy file operations, Hetzner’s ARM servers are worth the monthly cost. You get predictable, fast NVMe storage instead of the throttled shared storage on Oracle’s free tier.
One thing to keep in mind: Oracle’s free tier can be unpredictable. Some users report instances being reclaimed or availability issues when creating new free-tier VMs. Hetzner’s paid instances are always available and provisioned in seconds.
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