The Hetzner server auction, explained

How the auction works, what happened to prices, and how to use Server Radar to find the right server at the right price.

How the Hetzner server auction works

The Hetzner server auction (also known as Server-Bidding or Serverbörse) sells dedicated servers that previous customers have cancelled — typically machines from earlier product lines. Before a server is listed, Hetzner tests the hardware and wipes the disks. Defective hardware is replaced free of charge during the contract.

Despite the name, there is no bidding. Each listing starts at a fixed price for its model and the price then drops at randomized intervals until someone orders the server. Once it's ordered, it's gone — identical configurations may reappear later, but there is no way to predict when. Hetzner does not document a minimum price or a maximum listing duration, so waiting for a lower price is always a gamble against other buyers watching the same listing.

The terms are the same as for regular dedicated servers: monthly pricing with no setup fee and no minimum contract term, a dedicated 1 Gbit/s uplink with unlimited traffic, and provisioning usually within one business day — often much faster, since the hardware is already racked. Auction servers are located in Hetzner's Falkenstein and Helsinki data centers. The primary IPv4 address is a removable add-on (€1.70/month) — ordering IPv6-only shaves that off the monthly price, though some setups (e.g. Windows) require IPv4.

Because hardware, location, and price vary per listing, the auction rewards patience and comparison: the same money buys very different machines depending on the day. That's the gap Server Radar fills with searchable listings, price history, and alerts.

What happened to auction prices

For years the auction was a reliable source of cheap compute, but 2026 changed the baseline. In February 2026 Hetzner announced price increases across its portfolio, effective April 1, 2026 — including roughly 3% on auction listings, applied to new orders and existing contracts alike. Setup fees for regular dedicated servers rose in April (the auction has none), and in June 2026 Hetzner restructured its dedicated line-up with new names and prices while leaving the auction untouched.

The main driver is hardware cost: server DRAM contract prices rose over 40% in late 2025, with further steep increases through 2026. Memory-heavy configurations are affected the most — across the industry, not just at Hetzner. That also changes the auction's role: when new hardware gets more expensive, refurbished machines with lots of RAM become relatively better deals, and sought-after configurations sell faster.

The practical takeaway: individual listings still get cheaper the longer they sit, but the overall price level has shifted upward. Our statistics page shows how auction prices, volume, and hardware mix have developed, and the per-CPU pages show price ranges for specific models.

How we monitor the market

Every few minutes, Server Radar takes a snapshot of the entire auction: every listing with its current price, CPU, RAM, disks, location, and add-ons. The same happens for Hetzner's standard dedicated servers and for cloud availability across all locations. No account or special access is involved — it's the same public data you see on Hetzner's own pages, just recorded continuously instead of glanced at once.

Stringing those snapshots together is what turns a price tag into a story. We keep three months of history, so for any configuration you can see what it sold for last week, how low identical machines have gone before, and whether the current price is an outlier or business as usual. When a listing disappears between two snapshots, we know it was taken — that's how the sold-price statistics are built, and it's a far better signal of what a server is actually worth than asking prices alone.

The snapshots also power everything else on the site: the search works on the latest snapshot, configurations ranks notable current offers, and alerts compare each new snapshot against your targets — so a matching server triggers a notification within minutes of appearing, not whenever you happen to check. Server Radar is open source, free, and not affiliated with Hetzner.

Cloud availability — and why it's a problem

Hetzner Cloud has finite capacity per location, and popular server types regularly sell out — especially newer generations and specific locations. When a type is sold out, the order simply fails: there is no waitlist, no restock announcement, and no way to see from Hetzner's site whether a type has been gone for an hour or a month. If your setup needs a specific type in a specific location — say, to match existing servers in a project — your options are to take a pricier type, switch location, or keep re-checking the order page by hand.

That last part is what we automate. The cloud status page shows which server types are available in which locations right now, and the availability timeline shows how that looked over the past weeks: whether a sold-out type blips back several times a day, returns in bursts, or has been gone for a month. That history is the difference between "wait an hour" and "pick a different plan" being the right call.

And if waiting is the right call, you don't have to do it manually: cloud alerts notify you the moment a type becomes available in a location you care about.

Price & availability alerts

Auction listings disappear when someone buys them, so checking manually means being lucky or being late. Alerts watch the market for you: define a filter, set a target price, and Server Radar notifies you by email or Discord webhook as soon as a matching server is listed at or below your target. Because alerts are evaluated against every snapshot, you hear about a match within minutes — usually early enough to actually get the server.

The same works for cloud capacity: cloud alerts notify you when a server type becomes available in a location you care about, and can disarm themselves after firing so you aren't spammed. All alert features are free — you only need an account so we know where to send the notification.

Using AI assistants (MCP)

Server Radar exposes a Model Context Protocol server, so an AI assistant can query the auction on your behalf instead of you translating a question into filter sliders. Add https://radar.iodev.org/mcp as a custom connector in Claude (Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector), or point any other MCP client at the same URL.

Searching needs no account at all. You can ask things like "cheapest 64 GB EPYC in Falkenstein", "servers with exactly three disks under €50", or "which Cloud plans are sold out in Helsinki right now", and the assistant queries live data — refreshed about every five minutes, the same feed the site uses.

Managing alerts needs an account. The first time your assistant tries, you are sent here to sign in and then shown exactly which application is asking and what it will be able to do. Nothing is granted until you press Allow. You can withdraw it later under settings → connected applications, which takes effect immediately.

One thing worth knowing when you read prices back from an assistant: every figure the MCP server returns is net of VAT and already includes the mandatory IPv4 address. That is the same basis the alert tools use, so "alert me under €40" means the same number you saw in the search results. Ask for a VAT rate and it will report the gross figure alongside, rather than quietly changing what the number means.

Server Radar is an independent project and is not affiliated with Hetzner — the assistant is told so too, so it should not present these numbers as coming from Hetzner directly.