Contabo vs Netcup 2026: Cheap Shared CPU vs Dedicated Cores

Head-to-head at a glance

What actually drives the migration (it's not disk)

The standard story is "Contabo throttles disk, so people leave." That was true, but it's now half-outdated and worth correcting, because it sends people to the wrong fix. Contabo's disk only throttles on the older SSD line (capped near 1,300 IOPS for years); the NVMe line benchmarks at 33k-46k IOPS, fast. So if disk was your only problem, the fix is cheap and stays within Contabo: pick the NVMe line. You don't need Netcup for that.

The thing a faster disk can't fix, and the real reason people move, is CPU steal. Contabo's CPU is shared and nodes are oversold; users report steal spiking into the 20-50% range during busy hours. That means your box can benchmark fine at 3am and crawl at 3pm, regardless of which disk line you're on. For a workload that needs consistent, predictable CPU (a busy database, a site under steady load, anything latency-sensitive), no Contabo plan solves that, because it's a property of how Contabo sells the hardware, not of your specific box. That's the genuine "Contabo alternative" trigger, and it's a CPU problem, not an IOPS one.

What Netcup offers instead

Netcup's Root Server (RS) line is the natural landing spot for the CPU-steal problem, and its pitch is the inverse of Contabo's. Where Contabo sells quantity on shared, oversold CPU, Netcup markets dedicated cores, the whole point being that no noisy neighbor can steal your cycles. The entry RS 1000 G12 is 4 dedicated cores, 8GB DDR5 ECC, and 256GB NVMe; the G12 generation runs on AMD's EPYC 9645 (Turin / Zen 5). Community benchmark runs (YABS/Geekbench) generally show the dedicated-core RS holding consistent single-core performance where shared vCPU plans sag under contention, which is exactly the consistency Contabo's oversold nodes can't promise.

Two honest caveats, because Netcup isn't flawless. First, "dedicated cores" is Netcup's marketing framing, and while the community broadly accepts the RS line performs like dedicated, some users question how strictly 1:1 the pinning is, treat it as "explicitly not throttled like Contabo/Hetzner shared," which is the part that's clear. Second, Netcup's support draws recurring complaints, particularly abuse-triggered account shutdowns with slow response and, in some Trustpilot reports, servers deleted without a clear final warning. It's better hardware, not better hand-holding.

Price & the 2026 increases

The honest price gap: Contabo entry is about $4.50/mo; Netcup's cheapest RS is about €12.79/mo incl. VAT (~$14) on a 12-month term with no setup fee. You're paying roughly 3x, and the thing you're buying with that premium is dedicated cores (guaranteed CPU), not a faster disk, since Contabo's NVMe line already gives you fast disk. So the price question is narrow and clear: is consistent CPU worth ~3x to your workload?

One 2026 wrinkle to factor in: Netcup announced price increases driven by the industry-wide RAM cost surge, +18.51% for existing customers (from May 1, 2026), +24.33% on new orders (from March 19, 2026), and +21.52% on storage (per Netcup's official price-adjustment notice). Hetzner raised prices the same season (effective April 1, 2026). So if you're price-comparing across these hosts in 2026, use current live quotes, the numbers moved this spring across the whole budget tier.

Which to pick, by workload

• Max RAM/storage per dollar, CPU-tolerant work (caching, in-memory apps, dev boxes, batch jobs): Contabo, on the NVMe line. Nothing matches its price per GB and the NVMe disk keeps up. Contabo plans →
• Work needing guaranteed consistent CPU (busy databases, steady-load sites, latency-sensitive apps): Netcup RS. Dedicated cores are exactly what Contabo's oversold shared CPU can't promise. Netcup RS plans →
• You bought Contabo and it's crawling: diagnose first (how to tell disk vs CPU steal). If it's the SSD-line disk, switch to Contabo's NVMe line, no need to leave. If it's CPU steal, that's the case where Netcup RS is the real upgrade.

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