Every category where a model named Hetzner for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Cloud hosting	Cloud and infrastructure	9%	4 of 78	6%	18	accepted challenger
Managed Kubernetes platforms	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	45 of 48	67%	3	under 10 labels · led by Google Kubernetes Engine at 39%
Managed relational databases	Data platform	0%	64 of 73	50%	2	under 10 labels · led by Amazon RDS at 32%
Object storage	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	32 of 46	50%	2	under 10 labels · led by Backblaze B2 at 46%
DDoS protection	Network and edge	0%	22 of 51	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare at 93%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Hetzner yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Hetzner across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	1	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	1	0	0	0	1
Gemini 3.5 Flash	2	1	1	1	5
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	1	1	1	0	3
Mistral Small	1	2	0	0	3
DeepSeek V4 Flash	2	1	1	1	5
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	0	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	0	0	1
Kimi K2	0	1	0	0	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	1	2	3
MiniMax M2.5	0	1	0	1	2

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct3 labelsNone

Paraphrase3 labelsNone

Comparative12 labelsNone

Budget-constrained20 labels7

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative16 labels3not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative54 labels in all, every segment counted; 7 of the 10 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Hetzner — *The Absolute King of Value*... Choose Hetzner if you have a developer and want the absolute lowest monthly bill” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Cloud hosting · budget prompt · first choice

“Hetzner is frequently recommended as the reliable alternative to Contabo — it's praised as "boringly reliable"” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Cloud hosting · negative prompt · first choice

“For most small companies on a tight budget, I'd start with Hetzner Cloud for cheapest good performance” GPT-5.4 mini · Cloud hosting · budget prompt · first choice

“Hetzner Cloud stands out as one of the best options for companies on a limited budget” Grok 4.1 Fast · Cloud hosting · budget prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Hetzner famously has no first-party managed Kubernetes, just self-managed paths — avoid if you need managed support” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · hard negative

“Avoid these for teams without highly experienced Database Administrators (DBAs)” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Managed databases · negative prompt · hard negative

“Reports of data loss incidents (files going missing from buckets)” MiniMax M2.5 · Object storage · negative prompt · hard negative

“Great server performance and affordable pricing... Concerns: Slow customer service responses” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Cloud hosting · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Hetzner, over the 54 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Hetzner was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

DigitalOcean32 of 548Not in the top three

Amazon Web Services29 of 543Not in the top three

Azure22 of 541Not in the top three

Google Cloud22 of 541Not in the top three

Vultr22 of 541Not in the top three

Akamai Connected Cloud19 of 540Not in the top three

OVHcloud15 of 541Not in the top three

Microsoft Azure9 of 540Not in the top three

Cloudways8 of 542Not in the top three

Hostinger8 of 542Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Hetzner. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 42 of the 54 answers that named Hetzner and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

digitalocean.com19

dev.to15

hostingadvice.com15

reddit.com14

techradar.com11

forbes.com8

geekflare.com8

atlantic.net7

instawp.com7

theweather.agency7

111 of the 111 domain citations in answers naming Hetzner came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

techradar.com/news/best-cloud-hosting-providers9

dev.to/dkechag/cloud-provider-comparison-2024-vm-performance-price-3h4l8

hostingadvice.com/how-to/cloud-hosting-cost8

digitalocean.com/resources/articles/comparing-aws-azure-gcp7

instawp.com/best-cloud-hosting-options-for-startups7

theweather.agency/blog/hosts-from-hell-the-worlds-worst-web-hosting-companies-and-why-they7

atlantic.net/cloud-platform/best-cloud-hosting-providers-small-businesses6

geekflare.com/hosting/best-cloud-hosting-platforms6

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Hetzner

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Hetzner; a claim can dispute any of them.

Hetzner Cloud 3Hetzner Online GmbH 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Hetzner's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Hetzner, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at hetzner.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.