Hetzner was cheaper at every size I tested and I still chose managed Postgres

Short summary

A developer compares managed Postgres providers (Neon, Supabase, Prisma) against self-hosted Hetzner for a 0.5 GB database and finds Hetzner cheaper at every tier but still chooses managed. The deciding factor is operational burden — patching, backups, and on-call — not raw price. Egress pricing varies by orders of magnitude across providers and is the real cost trap for small databases.

• •Hetzner self-hosted is cheapest at every storage tier but shifts operational burden to the owner
• •Egress pricing differs by 80x between providers (250 GB vs 20 TB included) and is the real cost variable
• •Managed Postgres lock-in is minimal: exit is a dump, restore, and connection-string change

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.