Hetzner Storage Box vs Wasabi:
Which Cloud Storage Is Right for You?

Hetzner Storage Box

Hetzner Storage Box is a network-attached storage product available in four fixed-size tiers from 1 TB to 20 TB. It's accessed over standard file transfer protocols - SFTP, FTP(S), SCP, Samba/CIFS, WebDAV, and rsync - which makes it instantly compatible with virtually every backup tool ever written. BorgBackup, Restic, rsync, and rclone all work out of the box, and the box can be mounted as a network drive via Samba or WebDAV.

Storage Boxes are physically located in Hetzner's data centres in either Germany or Finland - you choose the location at provisioning time. Access from Hetzner servers in the same location is over an internal network, which means transfer is fast and - crucially - does not count against any bandwidth quota. If you're running a server at Hetzner, the Storage Box is the lowest-friction backup destination that exists.

Each Storage Box supports up to 100 sub-accounts with individual access credentials and directory restrictions, making it suitable for managing backups from multiple servers without sharing a single credential. Snapshots are included: the BX11 gets 10 manual and 10 automatic snapshots; larger tiers scale up to 40 each. All of this costs nothing extra.

Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage

Wasabi is a purpose-built S3-compatible object storage service. Its entire value proposition is a flat, predictable price with no egress fees and no API request fees - the two line items that make AWS S3 bills unpredictable and often shocking. You pay one rate for the data you store, nothing more.

As an S3-compatible service, Wasabi works with anything that speaks the AWS S3 API - which in practice means almost every modern application, backup tool, and cloud-native service. rclone, Cyberduck, S3Browser, and virtually every SaaS product with a "bring your own storage" option supports Wasabi natively.

Wasabi operates storage regions across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East. You pick the region when creating a bucket and your data stays there. For EU users and GDPR compliance, the Frankfurt (eu-central-2) and Amsterdam (eu-west-1) regions are available.

Pricing: Side by Side

The pricing models are fundamentally different - and so is the outcome. Hetzner Storage Box charges for allocated capacity in fixed tiers regardless of how much you actually fill. Wasabi charges for what you store, down to the gigabyte. But on a per-TB basis, Hetzner wins decisively at every size:

• 1 TB: Hetzner €3.81/mo vs Wasabi ~$6.99/mo - Hetzner is roughly half the price
• 5 TB: Hetzner €12.97/mo vs Wasabi ~$34.95/mo - Hetzner is ~2.7× cheaper
• 10 TB: Hetzner €24.75/mo vs Wasabi ~$69.90/mo - Hetzner is ~2.8× cheaper
• 20 TB: Hetzner €48.31/mo vs Wasabi ~$139.80/mo - Hetzner is ~3× cheaper

If raw storage cost per TB is your primary metric and a fixed tier fits your use case, Hetzner Storage Box is substantially cheaper. Wasabi's advantage is not price - it's the S3 API, global reach, and pay-only-for-what-you-use flexibility. If you store unpredictable amounts of data across multiple applications and regions, Wasabi's model makes more sense even at a higher per-TB rate.

Direct Comparison

Key Differences in Depth

The Protocol Question: SFTP vs S3

This is the most important differentiator and it comes down to what you're trying to do. If your goal is backups - running BorgBackup, Restic, or rsync to ship copies of your data offsite - Hetzner Storage Box is the natural fit. These tools speak SFTP natively, Hetzner's protocol support is complete and well-tested, and the internal network connection from a co-located Hetzner server is both fast and completely free.

If your goal is object storage for applications - storing user uploads, static assets, media files, dataset exports, or anything accessed via an API - Wasabi is the right choice. The S3 API is the lingua franca of cloud object storage. Any framework, SaaS tool, or deployment pipeline that knows how to talk to AWS S3 will talk to Wasabi identically. Hetzner Storage Box has no S3-compatible endpoint; using it for application storage requires either rclone as a translation layer or a significant amount of custom code.

Cost at Scale with Egress

The headline pricing comparison above only tells part of the story. With AWS S3 and Google Cloud Storage, egress is charged per GB - typically €0.08–0.09/GB. On a CDN-heavy workload serving 10 TB of downloads per month, that's an additional €800–900 on top of storage costs. Both Hetzner Storage Box and Wasabi charge zero for egress, which makes them dramatically cheaper for any workload that regularly moves data out.

For Hetzner Storage Box, "egress" means downloads from the box to the internet (not internal Hetzner traffic). Wasabi's no-egress promise applies universally - you can download from any Wasabi bucket to anywhere in the world at no charge. This makes Wasabi particularly attractive for media storage, software distribution, or any workload with high read volume.

Integration Ecosystem

Wasabi's S3 compatibility opens doors that Hetzner's SFTP-based approach cannot. Practically speaking this means:

• Applications - any app using the AWS SDK (Node.js, Python, Go, PHP) connects to Wasabi by changing the endpoint URL. Zero code changes to business logic.
• Backup software - Veeam, Duplicati, Cloudberry, Arq, and dozens of others support Wasabi natively as an S3-compatible target
• CDN integration - Cloudflare R2, BunnyCDN, and KeyCDN can pull from Wasabi, turning it into a CDN origin
• Terraform / IaC - the AWS S3 provider in Terraform works with Wasabi by setting a custom endpoint
• Analytics tools - Athena-style query engines, data pipelines, and ML training frameworks all read from S3-compatible stores

Hetzner Storage Box integrates well with traditional Unix tooling and backup software but has essentially no presence in the cloud-native application layer.

Data Sovereignty and Compliance

Both services offer EU storage options. Hetzner's data centres in Germany and Finland are ISO 27001-certified and well-regarded for GDPR compliance. Wasabi's Frankfurt and Amsterdam regions are also within the EU. For most GDPR compliance scenarios, both are equally viable.

The difference is control. With Hetzner Storage Box you are dealing with a single European provider under German and EU law. Wasabi is a US-incorporated company (Massachusetts) that operates EU data centres - the data may be stored in the EU, but the company is subject to US legal jurisdiction, which includes the CLOUD Act. For highly sensitive data, this distinction may matter to your legal team.

Reliability and SLA

Hetzner does not publish a formal SLA with uptime guarantees for Storage Box. In practice, reliability is very good, but it's infrastructure-grade storage rather than enterprise-grade object storage with redundancy guarantees. Wasabi publishes an 11-nines durability claim (99.999999999%) comparable to AWS S3, backed by erasure coding across multiple nodes.

Combining Both

These two products aren't mutually exclusive - in fact, a common and sensible architecture uses both:

• Hetzner Storage Box for server backups (BorgBackup/Restic via SFTP, internal network, no egress cost, snapshots)
• Wasabi for application object storage (user uploads, assets, media, accessed via S3 API from anywhere)

This gives you the best of both - a purpose-fit backup destination that's free to access from co-located Hetzner servers, and a globally accessible, S3-compatible store for application data with predictable pricing and no egress fees.

When to Choose Hetzner Storage Box

• You run servers at Hetzner and want the simplest possible backup destination
• Your backup tool of choice speaks SFTP, rsync, or Samba natively
• You want snapshots included with no additional configuration
• You need sub-account isolation for multi-server backup management
• You store less than 1 TB and want a flat, predictable monthly cost below Wasabi's minimum
• You want to keep everything within a single European provider

When to Choose Wasabi

• Your application uses the AWS S3 SDK and you want a cheaper, egress-free alternative to AWS
• You need to store objects accessible from outside the Hetzner network (CDN origins, public downloads, multi-cloud)
• You're storing more than 1 TB and want to pay only for what you use
• You need global storage regions for users across multiple continents
• You want reserved capacity pricing for predictable long-term costs
• Your workflow uses S3-compatible tooling (Terraform, Veeam, SaaS integrations)

Recommendation

For Hetzner server operators running Linux: Start with a Storage Box for backups. The internal network, native SFTP support, and included snapshots make it the easiest and cheapest backup solution available. There's nothing to configure beyond mounting the share or pointing BorgBackup at the SFTP endpoint.

For application object storage: Wasabi. The S3 API compatibility, no-egress-fee model, and global reach make it the most practical AWS S3 alternative for teams who don't want to pay hyperscaler prices but need real object storage semantics.

For teams doing both: run them in parallel. The combined cost of a BX11 Storage Box (€3.81/mo for 1 TB) and a few TB on Wasabi ($6.99/TB/mo) comfortably undercuts what a single AWS S3 setup with egress would cost - while covering more use cases.