Every European bare metal and dedicated server reviewed
Naaldwijk, Netherlands
Monthly rental, no setup fee; the server list on the site starts at €54 a month
Demo on request
Best for: Dutch and German workloads that need physical servers delivered the same day on a Dutch contract
Worldstream runs its dedicated server list as a catalogue of 41 configurations, filterable by data centre, delivery time, uplink, processor family and memory. Seven entries are marked as live within two hours, 33 as within 24 hours and one as a seven-day custom build, so a buyer sees the wait before choosing. The cheapest entry in the list is €54 a month, and AMD EPYC 4000-series entries start at €135 a month.
The contracting company is Worldstream B.V. of Naaldwijk, Netherlands, and the terms apply Dutch law with the district court of The Hague. Data centres are operated by a sister company, Greenhouse Datacenters, near Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. Worldstream lists ISO 27001, ISO 9001 and PCI DSS certificates for them, and quotes a seven-minute average support response, which is its own figure. The terms PDF carries a draft label, so ask for the signed version.
What Worldstream does well
- Each configuration shows its own delivery time
- Data centres run by a sister company
- Monthly traffic volume guaranteed on every plan
- ISO 27001, ISO 9001 and PCI DSS certificates listed
- Dutch law, with the Hague court named in the terms
Where Worldstream falls short
- Almost entirely in the Netherlands, with two German configurations
- Pages reviewed show monthly rental only
- No public provisioning API on the pages reviewed
- Terms PDF carries a draft label
Standout feature. Worldstream publishes the delivery time for every configuration in its list, down to the seven-day custom build.
Šiauliai, Lithuania
Dedicated servers from €0.084 an hour; monthly and annual terms; spot servers up to 70 percent cheaper
Demo on request
Best for: Teams that want bare metal on an hourly or crypto-friendly contract from a Lithuanian company
Cherry Servers sells dedicated servers on three billing models: hourly from €0.084, fixed monthly or annual terms, and spot servers advertised as up to 70 percent cheaper but open to termination at any time. Management runs through a web interface or an API, and the product list includes elastic block storage, floating IPs, a load balancer and free backup storage on dedicated servers. The company states an average deployment time of twelve minutes.
UAB "Cherry servers" is registered in Šiauliai, Lithuania, under Lithuanian law, and disputes go to the Vilnius Court of Commercial Arbitration. It lists seven locations: Lithuania, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Frankfurt, plus Chicago, Singapore and Tokyo. More than twenty payment methods are accepted, cryptocurrencies included, and the vendor claims a 99.97 percent uptime SLA, a 100G+ backbone and a 15-day money-back guarantee.
What Cherry Servers does well
- Hourly, monthly, annual and spot pricing
- Vendor-stated average deployment of twelve minutes
- Seven locations linked by a 100G+ backbone, per the vendor
- Cryptocurrency and more than twenty payment methods
- 15-day money-back guarantee and a 99.97 percent uptime SLA
Where Cherry Servers falls short
- Chicago, Singapore and Tokyo sit outside Europe
- Spot servers can be terminated without notice
- Some plans show waiting lists when stock is out
- Disputes go to arbitration in Vilnius
Standout feature. Cherry Servers is the only provider on the page that combines hourly metal, spot capacity and cryptocurrency payment.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Instant servers listed from €50 a month; GPU servers from €90; hourly and monthly billing
Demo on request
Best for: Technical teams that want unmanaged servers delivered quickly with the option to bring their own IP space
Hostkey presents two ways to buy: an instant list of ready configurations marked buy now or pre-order, and custom servers on request. A 4-vCPU, 32 GB machine in the instant list costs €50 a month with a 1 Gbps port and 30 to 50 TB of traffic, GPU servers begin at €90, and S3-compatible object storage is rented from €2. Billing is hourly or monthly.
HOSTKEY B.V. is registered in Amsterdam with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce under number 52751554, and its terms apply Dutch law and Dutch courts. The company says it owns more than 7,000 servers in Tier III data centres across the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Finland, Iceland, Turkey and the United States. Servers arrive unmanaged, and a compliance page describes identity checks and sanctions screening before activation.
What Hostkey does well
- Buy-now list for stock configurations
- GPU servers and S3-compatible storage from the same vendor
- Bring-your-own-IP and bring-your-own-AS at no charge
- Hourly and monthly billing
- Contracts with HOSTKEY B.V. under Dutch law
Where Hostkey falls short
- Servers are unmanaged unless administration is bought
- Identity and sanctions checks precede activation
- Turkey and the United States share the location list
- The Dutch Terms of Service page shows a 2019 date
Standout feature. Hostkey lets a customer announce their own IP range and AS number from rented servers without paying extra.
Gunzenhausen, Germany
Founded 1997
From €4.51/month (Cloud VPS)
Demo on request
Best for: Developers and businesses seeking affordable, reliable EU-hosted cloud infrastructure
Hetzner approaches rented hardware as a price question. Its dedicated range is split into AX, EX and SX lines, and a server auction offers previously used machines at reduced monthly rents, which the site describes as functional hardware with standard support. A Robot API manages the dedicated range programmatically, and the cloud, storage boxes and load balancers come from the same account.
Hetzner Online GmbH is based in Gunzenhausen, Germany, was founded in 1997 and runs data centres in Germany and Finland. The tool page reports 20 TB of outbound traffic on most cloud plans and no charge for inbound traffic, snapshots or API calls, and a cloud VPS from €4.51 a month. Server Finder prices are rendered by JavaScript, so read the dedicated rent on the page rather than from this review.
What Hetzner does well
- Auction for used servers at low monthly rents
- Unlimited traffic on the dedicated range, per the page card
- Cloud VPS and storage under the same account
- German company with data centres in Germany and Finland
- No charges for API calls, snapshots or data retrieval on the cloud side
Where Hetzner falls short
- Only two data centre countries
- Support is efficient but limited in hand-holding
- No hourly bare metal instances like Bare Metal Cloud
- No free tier
Standout feature. Hetzner runs a marketplace for refurbished dedicated servers, which no other provider on the page lists.
Paris, France
Founded 1999
From €0.0025/hour (DEV1-S)
Demo on request
Best for: Developers and businesses seeking European cloud infrastructure with competitive pricing
Scaleway splits physical servers into two products. Elastic Metal is billed by the hour from €0.077 or by the month with a one-time commitment fee, and Dedibox is a monthly rental range. Both sit beside Scaleway's cloud instances, managed Kubernetes and S3-compatible storage, so a team can mix metal and virtual machines under one account. GPU instances are also listed.
Scaleway is a subsidiary of the Iliad Group, headquartered in Paris, and has operated since 1999. Its data centres are in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan, all inside the EU. The tool page states hourly billing without hidden egress fees, and also admits fewer regions and thinner documentation for unusual cases than the largest clouds.
What Scaleway does well
- Hourly Elastic Metal and monthly Dedibox from one company
- All four data centre cities are in the EU
- Kubernetes, serverless functions and object storage next door
- GPU instances for AI and machine learning
- Iliad Group is the parent company
Where Scaleway falls short
- Four locations, fewer than the large hosts
- Lower support tiers rely on community help
- Fewer niche services than AWS or Google Cloud
- Documentation is thinner for edge cases
Standout feature. Scaleway is the only provider here that sells hourly metal and a separate cheap monthly range inside one EU cloud.
Roubaix, France
Founded 1999
PostgreSQL essential from about €0.16/hour (2 vCPU / 8GB RAM); MySQL, MongoDB, Kafka, Cassandra, OpenSearch, M3DB and Valkey priced separately by engine and tier
Demo on request
Best for: Buyers who want one French supplier covering entry-level to high-grade servers
OVHcloud organises its bare metal into five ranges, running from the entry-level Kimsufi line to High Grade, with anti-DDoS protection active by default, the vRack private network and 500 GB of backup space named on the product cards. Because the ladder is long, a small project and a production database can both be bought from the same account.
OVHcloud SAS is headquartered in Roubaix, France, was founded in 1999 and states that it operates 46 data centres on four continents, most of them in Europe, on its own hardware. It holds SecNumCloud certification and is a Gaia-X founding member, according to the tool page. The same page warns that pricing is granular per resource, so budgets need a worked estimate.
What OVHcloud does well
- Five server ranges from Kimsufi to High Grade
- Anti-DDoS protection included by default
- vRack private network between servers
- Own European data centres and hardware
- SecNumCloud certification and Gaia-X founding membership
Where OVHcloud falls short
- Per-resource pricing is hard to estimate for a real bill
- Console and tooling less polished than specialist providers
- Many ranges means more choices to compare
- Data centres on four continents, so the location needs checking
Standout feature. OVHcloud offers a single ladder from the Kimsufi entry line to High Grade servers, with anti-DDoS filtering on throughout.
Vilnius, Lithuania
See website; the configurator filters by data centre, CPU, RAM, storage and bandwidth
Demo on request
Best for: Network-heavy workloads such as streaming, ad tech and gaming that need big ports and BGP
Melbicom builds its pitch on network capacity. Dedicated ports reach 100 Gbps, separate pages cover unmetered servers at 1, 2, 5, 10 and 40 Gbps, and private networking between servers is free. BGP sessions, VRRP, bring-your-own-IP and IPMI or KVM access are supported, and a dashboard handles reboot, reinstall and rescue mode. The company says stock servers go live in two hours.
Melbikomas UAB is registered in Vilnius, Lithuania, and its Terms of Services apply Lithuanian law. Around twenty locations include Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, Warsaw and Stockholm, but also Atlanta, Tokyo, Mumbai and Lagos. The home page lists an ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certificate, and the 10 Tbps network and four-hour component replacement are the vendor's own claims. Prices load dynamically, so none appear here.
What Melbicom does well
- Dedicated ports up to 100 Gbps
- BGP sessions and bring-your-own-IP
- About twenty locations, many of them European cities
- ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certificate listed
- Four-hour component replacement stated
Where Melbicom falls short
- Prices only visible in the interactive configurator
- A large share of locations lies outside the EU
- Less recognised than the large hosting groups
- Delivery and replacement times are the vendor's statements
Standout feature. Melbicom is the only provider on the page that sells ports as large as 100 Gbps next to BGP and bring-your-own-IP.
Munich, Germany
Founded 2003
From €4.50/month
Demo on request
Best for: Cost-conscious developers and businesses needing generous resources
Contabo rents dedicated AMD servers without a setup fee, includes IPMI access and offers fair-use unlimited traffic, with the dedicated range listed in seven regions. The tool page adds that dedicated servers carry unmetered traffic at several port speeds, which suits media streaming, game servers and content delivery origins. Its VPS plans, from €4.50 a month, use physical CPU cores.
Contabo GmbH is based in Munich, Germany, has operated since 2003 and lists 12 locations worldwide, among them the UK, the United States, Singapore, Japan and Australia. The tool page is frank about the trade-off: the control panel and automation are more basic than premium providers, there is no tier with guaranteed SLAs, and provisioning can slow in busy periods. We could not read its dedicated server prices, so none are quoted.
What Contabo does well
- No setup fee and IPMI included
- Physical CPU cores rather than oversubscribed ones
- Fair-use unlimited traffic on dedicated machines
- NVMe storage and DDoS protection as standard
- German company operating since 2003
Where Contabo falls short
- Control panel and automation are basic
- No premium support with guaranteed SLAs
- Provisioning can be slow in busy periods
- Fewer managed services than Scaleway or Cyso Cloud
Standout feature. Contabo pairs a zero setup fee with IPMI access and fair-use unlimited traffic on its dedicated AMD range.
Luxembourg
Founded 2014
Free tier available, paid from €25/month
Demo on request
Best for: Gaming companies, streaming platforms, and businesses needing low-latency global content delivery
Gcore rents dedicated servers in more than twenty locations with DDoS filtering and GPU options, but its larger offer is the platform around them. The tool page lists 180-plus points of presence, edge computing, cloud virtual machines, DNS hosting and load balancing, and notes a heritage in game and video delivery. A free tier exists for some services, and paid plans start from €25 a month.
The contracting entity, read from the legal page, is G-Core Labs S.A. of Luxembourg, a company founded in 2014. EU jurisdiction applies, though servers in the large location list will not all be in the EU. Dedicated server prices are rendered on the client side and are not quoted here. The tool page calls the platform more than a small website needs.
What Gcore does well
- Dedicated servers in more than twenty locations
- 180-plus points of presence in the wider network
- DDoS protection, DNS and load balancing from the same supplier
- GPU options on the dedicated range
- Luxembourg company under EU jurisdiction
Where Gcore falls short
- Paid plans start from about €25 a month
- A broad platform means more to configure
- Dedicated prices are not visible without the configurator
- Not open source
Standout feature. Gcore attaches dedicated servers to the widest edge network in this category, with 180-plus points of presence.
Berlin, Germany
Founded 1997
Homepage-Baukasten Basic €9/month (AI website generator only), Plus €15/month (adds AI text, image and SEO tools), Pro €20/month (adds STRATO rankingCoach); discounted first-period rates available
Demo on request
Best for: Small businesses that want Linux or Windows dedicated servers kept inside the EU
STRATO sells dedicated servers on Linux and Windows. The Windows machines come with Plesk, the Linux images are Docker ready, and the range sits in data centres that STRATO owns in Germany. The page card lists ISO 27001. Next to specialist metal providers, the appeal is a familiar hosting brand rather than a hardware catalogue.
STRATO GmbH is headquartered in Berlin, was founded in 1997 and belongs to the same corporate group as IONOS, so it is less independent than most entries here. Its website builder prices start at €9 a month for the Basic tier, which is a different product from the servers. The tool page rates the design as competent rather than distinctive. Prices are in euros only, and server rents are not quoted in this review.
What STRATO does well
- Windows servers with Plesk
- Docker-ready Linux images
- Own data centres in Germany
- ISO 27001 listed on the page card
- Over 25 years of hosting from Berlin
Where STRATO falls short
- Shares a parent company with IONOS
- No hourly billing or API shown in the pages we read
- Germany-only footprint
- Server prices are not quoted in this review
Standout feature. STRATO is the provider here that sells Windows dedicated servers with Plesk as a standard option from German data centres.
Montabaur, Germany
Founded 1988
PostgreSQL from about €0.06/core/hour plus €0.007/GB RAM/hour, plus storage from about €0.04-0.15/GB per 30 days depending on tier; MongoDB and In-Memory DB priced separately
Demo on request
Best for: Organisations that want dedicated servers, domains and email from one German company
IONOS sells dedicated servers on AMD and Intel processors, GPU servers and storage servers with up to 140 TB, with RAID and a DDoS shield and an AI assistant in the control panel. The same account holds domains, email and hosting, which is the draw for organisations that prefer fewer suppliers. Rentals are monthly.
IONOS SE is headquartered in Montabaur, Germany, and was founded in 1988. The category page points to the German company site because the .com site lists separate terms for IONOS Inc, so check which entity appears on the order. Its data centres are ISO 27001-certified and European. The tool page notes a narrower catalogue than OVHcloud for managed databases, which does not affect the server range.
What IONOS does well
- Storage servers up to 140 TB
- AMD, Intel and GPU server lines
- RAID and DDoS shield included
- ISO 27001-certified European data centres
- Domains, email and hosting under the same account
Where IONOS falls short
- Separate IONOS Inc terms on the .com site
- Monthly rentals only on the pages we read
- Granular per-resource pricing on cloud products
- Less API-driven than hourly metal providers
Standout feature. IONOS lists storage servers up to 140 TB, the largest disk configuration named by any provider on the page.
United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Monthly rental in GBP; the 6-core Xeon E-2356G model is listed at £100 a month after a 13 percent reduction
Demo on request
Best for: UK businesses that want rented physical hardware in a British data centre under a UK contract
Fasthosts presents a readable list of dedicated servers on Intel Xeon and AMD Epyc with NVMe or HDD storage, DDR4 or DDR5 memory and unlimited traffic over 1 Gbit/s public connections. The 6-core Xeon E-2356G with 32 GB is listed at £100 a month after a 13 percent reduction, a 20-core Xeon Gold with 192 GB at £265 or £300, and AMD Epyc 4244P machines from £110. Prices exclude VAT and no setup fee applies.
Fasthosts Internet Limited is British, and its dedicated servers are described as hosted in ISO 27001-certified UK data centres, with locations also in Germany, Spain and the United States. The minimum term is twelve months, many rows say limited stock and ordering by phone, and the governing law was not found in the terms we read. Plesk Obsidian and Cyber Protect backup are optional add-ons.
What Fasthosts does well
- Unlimited traffic across the dedicated range
- Price and specification on every row
- ISO 27001-certified UK data centres
- Intel and AMD with a choice of NVMe or HDD
- Optional Plesk and backup
Where Fasthosts falls short
- One-year minimum term
- Limited stock, with phone ordering on many models
- Fewer locations than the large hosts
- Governing law not confirmed in the pages read
Standout feature. Fasthosts is the only provider on the page that contracts in the United Kingdom, with a price printed on every server row.
