Worked example · Azure
An Azure subscription with VMs, managed disks and PostgreSQL.
VM sizes read straight from the meters, disks from their tier letters, a flexible PostgreSQL server sized as a vCore pool, and a Marketplace line left out. Read through the way the calculator reads it: the bill, what it becomes on Hetzner, the verdict, and what would change it.
The bill
$2,142 a month across 10 services after setting aside marketplace, tax, support plan, refund. The six largest lines:
| Service | Grade | Today | On Hetzner | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual Machines | Easy | $838 | $208 | saves $630 |
| Bandwidth | Easy | $348 | ~$0 | saves $348 |
| Storage | Easy | $335 | $159 | saves $176 |
| Azure Database for PostgreSQL | Moderate | $267 | $80 | saves $187 |
| Azure Monitor | Moderate | $180 | ~$54 | saves $126 |
| AKS | Moderate | $72 | ~$18 | saves $54 |
~ marks a rule-of-thumb ratio; the rest is priced from usage in the file.
What it becomes on Hetzner
- 9 servers: 4× CX43, 1× AX42-1, 3× CX23, 1× CX53
- $554/mo for servers, storage and traffic
- 40 h/mo of engineer time, $3,000
- $17,280 one-off, no payback at this net
Extra cost per year
$16,947
Not worth moving at this size. Hetzner costs more once someone is paid 40 hours a month to run it.
Grow first: at this size the hours decide, not the hardware. 5 of your 10 services move easily. 80% of the Hetzner figure is priced from your usage; the rest is ratio-priced services and engineer time, which is where the range comes from.
Likely range $4,528 more to $192 less a month. Hetzner list prices of 17 Oct 2026, default assumptions.
The same file on nine destinations
Net per year after engineer time, best first. No destination pays for this account; Hetzner loses least.
| Hetzner | −$16,947 over |
| Scaleway | −$24,626 over |
| OVHcloud | −$24,829 over |
| Vultr | −$26,089 over |
| Hetzner (US) | −$26,476 over |
| DigitalOcean | −$27,347 over |
| Akamai (Linode) | −$27,919 over |
| UpCloud | −$29,275 over |
| Exoscale | −$35,165 over |
What would change the answer
- Engineer time. 40 hours a month at $75/h is $3,000, 84% of the destination figure. Halve the rate or fold the work into an existing team and the verdict moves first.
- Scale. Engineer time grows slowly with the number of servers; hardware grows with the bill. The same mix at three times the size usually flips a marginal answer.
- Moving only part of it. The first wave (foundation: storage, traffic, edge) is Bandwidth, Storage, Load Balancer, Virtual Network: $546/mo for about 1 engineer days, with the databases left where they are.
Every one of these is a setting in the report. Open the example and change them.