HETZNER · INFOMANIAK · EXOSCALE · DUEL
Hetzner vs Infomaniak vs Exoscale – where does a Swiss fiduciary host its AI?
Three hosters head-to-head: CH data residency, monthly price, GPU availability, compliance profile. Decision guide for AI workloads in Swiss SMEs.
Researched & fact-checked by: DuneDive LLC · As of: 2026-05
What this is about
Hetzner, Infomaniak, and Exoscale are the three realistic hosting options when a Swiss fiduciary office, law firm, or SME runs an AI application. AWS, Azure, and GCP are technically more mature but US parent, FISA 702 and unclear sub-processor lists rule them out for many mandates.
Hetzner is a German hoster (Gunzenhausen, Falkenstein, Helsinki). Known for extremely low prices, high hardware quality, and a 25-year track record. Offers cloud VMs, dedicated servers, and since 2024 GPU instances (NVIDIA L40 and RTX 6000 Ada). EU locations only, no Swiss site.
Infomaniak is a Swiss hoster from Geneva, 100 percent operating in Switzerland and Swiss-owned. Runs on renewable energy, GDPR- and Swiss-DPA-certified, the Tier-3 data centre Lyon-France deliberately omitted – everything runs in Geneva and Plan-les-Ouates (Geneva region). Public Cloud with NVIDIA T4 GPU since 2024.
Exoscale is a Swiss hoster (founded in Lausanne, owned by A1 Digital, a Telekom Austria subsidiary since 2018) with data centres in Zurich, Geneva, Vienna, Frankfurt, Sofia. Swiss locations are Vinzenzweg Zurich (RH1) and Carouge near Geneva (CH-GVA-2). GPU available (NVIDIA A100 and L40).
As of May 2026 the three are not "interchangeable". Price, data residency, and GPU choice differ clearly.
Why this comparison?
The hosting choice drives four hard consequences for a Swiss SME application.
First data residency. Hetzner runs in Germany (EU), no CH site. Infomaniak and Exoscale run in Switzerland. For mandates under professional secrecy (Art. 321 SCC) or for health data (revFADP), CH data residency is the default; for plain Swiss-DPA compliance without professional secrecy, EU is enough.
Second price. Hetzner is clearly the cheapest: CX22 (2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM) from EUR 3.79/month (after the April 2026 price adjustment). Comparable Infomaniak Public Cloud profile about CHF 12/month. Comparable Exoscale instance from CHF 18/month. On 10 VMs that means about EUR 38 vs CHF 120 vs CHF 180 per month – over 5 years a range of CHF 4000+.
Third GPU availability. Hetzner has a GPU server line (NVIDIA L40, RTX 6000 Ada) from EUR 184/month dedicated. Infomaniak Public Cloud offers NVIDIA T4 GPUs in Switzerland (older, vRAM-limited). Exoscale has NVIDIA A100 (80 GB) and L40 in Zurich and Vienna. Anyone running 70B models locally needs A100 or L40 with high vRAM – that eliminates Infomaniak for large LLMs.
Fourth compliance profile and ISO certifications. Infomaniak has ISO 27001 and ISO 50001, Swiss-bank-secrecy-compatible setup, FSCS-compliant accounting. Exoscale has ISO 27001 and is Swiss-Made certified. Hetzner has ISO 27001 for some sites only but no CH focus. For mandates with an explicit ISO requirement the choice is clear.
Head-to-head on 6 axes
Data residency and Swiss DPA. Infomaniak and Exoscale run in Switzerland under Swiss law – data never leaves the country. Hetzner runs in EU (Germany, Finland), Swiss-DPA adequacy for EU is given but not "Swiss soil". For professional-secrecy mandates (lawyer, fiduciary, doctor) CH hosting is the standard, EU hosting the exception.
Price (May 2026 after Hetzner April price adjustment). Hetzner CX22 (2vCPU/4GB): EUR 3.79/month. CX42 (8vCPU/16GB): EUR 18.50/month. Dedicated AX52 (Ryzen 5950X, 128 GB): EUR 75/month. GPU GEX130 (L40): EUR 184/month. Infomaniak Cloud Server S (2vCPU/4GB): CHF 12/month, M (8vCPU/16GB): CHF 48/month, GPU T4 from CHF 250/month. Exoscale Tiny (1vCPU/1GB): CHF 8/month, Standard L (8vCPU/32GB): CHF 95/month, GPU A100 from CHF 1800/month.
GPU availability. Exoscale leads: A100 80 GB and L40 available in Zurich and Vienna, monthly reservation possible. Hetzner: L40 and RTX 6000 Ada dedicated, good price/performance, but EU location. Infomaniak: NVIDIA T4 (16 GB vRAM, older but energy-efficient), enough for models up to about 13B parameters, not for 70B. As of May 2026 Infomaniak plans expansion to higher GPU classes, not yet productive.
Compliance and ISO. Infomaniak: ISO 27001, ISO 50001 (energy), ISO 14001 (environment), Swissmade-software-certified, 100 percent renewable energy. Exoscale: ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, Swissmade. Hetzner: ISO 27001 for Falkenstein and Helsinki, otherwise standard. For FINMA-related mandates or an explicit ISO-certified-supplier requirement: Infomaniak or Exoscale.
Operations maturity. All three offer a cloud console, API, Terraform provider. Hetzner Cloud API is very simple (RESTful, lean), Hetzner Robot for dedicated. Infomaniak console German-French-Italian, very Swiss-oriented, OpenStack API. Exoscale Apache CloudStack-based, mature API, good Terraform integration. Maturity ranking: Hetzner > Exoscale > Infomaniak (Infomaniak API younger, OpenStack-typical quirks).
Support and DACH fit. Infomaniak: DE/FR/IT/EN support, 24/7 in Switzerland. Exoscale: EN/DE support from Lausanne and Vienna. Hetzner: DE/EN support from Gunzenhausen, very technical, ticket-based. For a Swiss SME fiduciary: Infomaniak has the most intuitive support, Hetzner the most technical.
Decision path in 6 steps
- 01Data classification: data under professional secrecy or health data? If yes, CH hosting mandatory = Infomaniak or Exoscale.
- 02Check GPU need: no local LLM = all three OK; local models up to 13B = T4 enough (Infomaniak); 70B models = L40 or A100 (Hetzner or Exoscale).
- 03Estimate budget: number of VMs x spec x 12 months. Hetzner is 50-70 percent cheaper than CH hosters.
- 04Check support language and response time: DE/FR/IT support 24/7 = Infomaniak; technical DE/EN = Hetzner; EN/DE = Exoscale.
- 05Check ISO certifications against supplier requirement: clients require ISO 27001 = Infomaniak or Exoscale; bonus renewable energy = Infomaniak.
- 06Build a pilot: 1 VM on the favoured hoster, measure 2-4 weeks (latency, stability, support quality), then scale.
When which hoster
When Hetzner. You have standard workloads without strict CH residency (e.g. marketing tool, internal tools with anonymised data, test environments). You want the lowest price with good hardware. You need GPU servers for Llama 3.3 70B or Mistral Large locally and value price/performance. You have a sysadmin who handles DE/EN support. Hetzner is the default when Swiss-DPA EU adequacy is enough (i.e. no professional secrecy involved).
When Infomaniak. You are a Swiss fiduciary, lawyer, doctor, or insurer and need pure CH hosting for client data. You value Swiss ownership and Swiss customer service (DE/FR/IT). You use smaller LLMs (up to 13B parameters) or pure RAG without a local model. You want ISO 27001 plus the renewable-energy story as a marketing argument to your clients. Infomaniak is the default for pure CH storage, small to mid-size AI workloads, and all customers with DACH languages.
When Exoscale. You need CH GPU with high vRAM class (A100 80 GB, L40) for models over 13B parameters (Llama 3.3 70B, Mistral Large local, Codestral). You want the more mature cloud API with Terraform integration. You value multi-region (CH + Vienna + Frankfurt + Sofia) for failover without leaving the Swiss site. You have a higher budget (CHF prices are 2-4x Hetzner). Exoscale is the choice for CH GPU workloads and multi-region CH setups.
When NONE. If you have a pure static site or a very small use case, Cloudflare Pages, Vercel, or GitHub Pages are simpler (CDN-only). If you need absolute tier-A sovereignty with bare-metal control (FINMA-strict), you need your own hardware in colocation (e.g. Equinix Zurich) – none of the three suffices. If you have a US-centric tooling stack (e.g. Bedrock, Vertex AI), AWS/GCP fits better; but that is no longer a CH-first setup.
When NONE of the three
If you have only a static marketing site, all three are overkill. Cloudflare Pages or Vercel are CDN-only and free up to mid-tier traffic. If your use case is a pure edge function (e.g. an API endpoint relaying LLM calls with no own state), Cloudflare Workers or Vercel Functions are faster.
If you need absolute tier-A sovereignty with hardware control (e.g. a FINMA-supervised bank process), none of the three standard cloud hosters suffices – you need dedicated colocation (Equinix Zurich Glattbrugg, Green-IT Lupfig). That is a different league and discussion.
If you have a US-centric tooling stack (Amazon Bedrock for Claude, Vertex AI for Gemini, Azure OpenAI for GPT) and your compliance allows a US cloud parent, AWS/GCP/Azure fits better for vendor binding; but that is no longer a CH-first setup.
If you have an edge-compute requirement with global latency (e.g. realtime voice agent for worldwide customers), Cloudflare or Fastly with their global PoPs is technically more appropriate than a single CH location.
Trade-offs
STRENGTHS
- Three-hoster picture cleanly separates price winner, CH storage, and CH GPU
- Concrete example prices instead of vendor marketing
- Data residency axis as first criterion for regulated mandates
- Combination strategy (Infomaniak + Exoscale) explicitly mentioned
WEAKNESSES
- Hetzner prices were raised in April 2026 and may change further
- GPU availability is subject to bottlenecks even on Exoscale (A100 waitlist possible)
- AWS/Azure CH regions are omitted here, may be relevant for some mandates
- Colocation options (Equinix, Green) for tier-A not covered
FAQ
Is Hetzner DE enough for a Swiss fiduciary?
For pure accounting tools and non-client data, yes (Swiss DPA recognises EU as adequate). For data under professional secrecy (Art. 321 SCC), CH hosting is the standard, EU hosting an exception – many clients explicitly demand CH. Safe path: Hetzner for internal tools, Infomaniak or Exoscale for client workloads.
What does a realistic AI stack cost on the three?
Example: 2 app servers (4vCPU/8GB) + 1 Postgres server (4vCPU/16GB) + 1 GPU server (Mistral Large local). Hetzner about EUR 240/month. Exoscale about CHF 2200/month (because of A100 GPU surcharge). Infomaniak about CHF 500/month without large GPU, or mixed with Exoscale GPU about CHF 2400/month. Rule of thumb: Hetzner = 1x, Infomaniak = 3x, Exoscale = 4-5x (with GPU).
Can I combine Infomaniak and Exoscale?
Yes, common. Storage and backups on Infomaniak (cheap), GPU compute on Exoscale (A100). Both offer S3-compatible object storage. Cross-provider setup needs VPN or site-to-site but is technically straightforward. Everything stays in CH residency and you use the strength of each provider.
What about AWS Switzerland-North or Azure Zurich?
Both have CH regions since 2022/2023. Data residency at facility level is CH. But the parent corporations (Amazon, Microsoft) are US-based – FISA 702 and Cloud Act remain risks. For mandates where "CH ownership of the hoster" is a requirement, only Infomaniak and Exoscale are strictly compliant.