You're probably on the wrong Cloud box<br>You're probably on the wrong Cloud box<br>by Dominik Zalewski · June 8, 2026<br>Abstract<br>The recent (2025) migration of a SME-scale Saas e-commerce application (Time Management) 1<br>to Hetzner Cloud 2 is used to demonstrate an approach for optimizing cloud cost efficiency.<br>TLDR<br>If at the start of every month, we were to choose a financially optimal cloud box with same spec (RAM, CPU), how much<br>less would the cost be.<br>Period: 2025-03 - 2026-04 (14 months)<br>Total Paid: €14 142.46<br>Current Cost: €1 878.02/mo<br>Potential Saving: 23.3% (€3 296)<br>MonthPaid [€]Optimal [€]Potential Saving [%]2025-0315673##################### 532025-04456221#################### 512025-05802566########### 292025-06846632######### 252025-07770661##### 142025-08853752#### 122025-09993883#### 112025-101 146852########## 262025-111 187891######### 252025-121 204913######### 242026-011 237947######### 232026-021 255965######### 232026-031 3571 052######### 232026-041 8781 437######### 23Analysis<br>Since the beginning of the migration in March 2025, you can clearly see the learning curve.<br>The overpaying percentage decreases month-to-month as I chose more optimal machine capacity.<br>I left the already migrated machines on the original box, but was doing later migrations to the cheaper boxes.<br>Around September 2025, when doing the migration, I realized I was missing the opportunity to use cheaper ARM processors.<br>I only managed to migrate 14 customers (out of ~200), when a change to the pricing model in October 2025 made this not<br>worth it.<br>On the 16th of October 2025 cloud provider (Hetzner) introduced CX Gen3 + CPX Gen2 launch (cx23 €2.99) 3 4.<br>This rendered the previously price optimal ARM and AMD processors choice obsolete. As a result instead of overpaying 11%, mytimeplan.com<br>started overpaying 26% in spite of unchanged requirements.<br>On the 1st of April 2026 (not an April Fool&rsquo;s Day joke) cloud provider (Hetzner) introduced pricing changes 5.<br>A flat ~30% increase that hit existing servers. This made the April 2026 invoice higher (1 878€) compared to March 2026 (1 357€) by around 28%.<br>The percentage of lost savings remained the same, since the change was nominally across the whole fleet,<br>so the ratio of choosing a different box could not possibly change.<br>There was a small window just before the 15th of June 2026 pricing change 6 7<br>to migrate the machines to more financially optimal, cutting the 23% loss and locking it in, but we missed it. As a result<br>the 23% gap is now permanent when only using the approach discussed in this article. However, we continue working on<br>other ideas for cutting costs even further.<br>Future Work / Open Questions<br>Since the pricing changes quite frequently, what is the alternative to manually adjusting the model?<br>How do we know that the current sizes of the boxes are optimal?<br>Can we take advantage of rescaling during non-office hours, if we know that the servers are idle then?<br>How did the cost change after migration compare to bare metal installations?<br>Summary<br>Chasing the cheapest type is a treadmill. Taking no action at all sometimes has disadvantages, like the October 2025<br>pricing change. But it sometimes has advantages, like June 2026 change, where rescaling existing box puts it to the new<br>pricing table, leaving it as is would keep it on the old pricing. Keeping the invoice optimal all the time with just manual<br>work, proves to be nearly impossible, at least in this case.<br>Want to know your potential cost saving?<br>Run the same audit on your own invoices. Cloud Inefficiency Audit<br>is a small open-source command-line tool that runs entirely on your machine — no account, no login, nothing uploaded.<br>Point it at a saved Hetzner invoice and it prints your potential cost saving.<br>Not technical? Mail your invoice page (saved as HTML) to dominikz@gelkao.com<br>and I&rsquo;ll reply with your number — I delete it afterwards.<br>About this case study<br>The infrastructure analysed above is mytimeplan.com&rsquo;s real production fleet<br>on Hetzner Cloud. It is shared, with their permission using exact numbers.<br>Most companies treat their cloud bill as something to hide. mytimeplan treats it<br>as something to measure and optimize.<br>That is also why they are hiring. mytimeplan is looking for a DevOps / platform<br>engineer to own exactly this kind of work: keeping a growing Hetzner fleet<br>right-sized and on the optimal plan as the pricing landscape keeps shifting under<br>it. If that is the sort of problem you enjoy solving, please contact job@mytimeplan.com<br>(send a CV).<br>Appendix: Current Fleet<br>At the time of writing, the fleet&rsquo;s characteristics are shown as below. The totals are slightly higher than the invoices,<br>as Hetzner issues invoices on the 25th of the following month for mytimeplan.com. The prices are also lower than list<br>prices on Hetzner&rsquo;s website, because they were locked-in at the time of box acquisition.<br>TypeUnit Price [€]CountCost [€]cx328.491211...