What PaaSbox costs.
The open components are free. PaaSbox Clusters is the one paid product: software as a service that creates and maintains k3s clusters in your own Hetzner project, for a planned €29 incl. VAT per cluster per month. It ran end to end on real Hetzner servers in a lab on 2026-10-10, and cannot be booked until the portal is live. A setup and consulting are on request: call me.
Open componentsIn progress
Free
The building blocks, the catalog and the guardrails, to run yourself.
- Clusters on Hetzner with Cluster API and k3s
- The platform and the PaaS layer
- The Gardener extensions for Hetzner and the paasbox CLI
- The catalog format, the lab rows and four golden entries
- Apache-2.0; the pool manager BSL-1.1
Being prepared for publication; the node images are already published.
PaaSbox ClustersIn progress
€29per cluster per month, incl. VAT
Outside the EU: $29 plus applicable sales tax
single node · planned price
Not bookable yet
Software as a service for one k3s cluster on one server in your own Hetzner project, created and kept current by the portal.
- For production and non-production, on one node
- Created in your project with your Hetzner API token
- k3s and the node's operating system upgraded in your maintenance window, after a snapshot
- Snapshots of the cluster's state to your own S3 bucket, and restore
- Temporary kubeconfigs and a short list of curated add-ons
- Detach at any time; the cluster keeps running
Paddle, the merchant of record, issues the invoice. Hetzner bills you directly for the server. Clusters with three servers come later, with their own price.
PaaSbox Clusters costs €29 per cluster per month incl. VAT; outside the EU, $29 plus applicable sales tax. Paddle sells it as the merchant of record: Paddle issues the invoice and handles VAT and sales tax.
Hetzner bills you directly for the servers in your project, whichever offer you choose.
A setup and consulting are on request: call me with what you run today and what you want to change.
The two offers compared
Section titled “The two offers compared”| Question | Open components | PaaSbox Clusters |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | €29 per cluster per month, incl. VAT · Outside the EU: $29 plus applicable sales tax · single node · planned price |
| What it is | Software you run yourself | Software as a service: the portal, the agent on the node, signed releases and the add-ons |
| For | Whatever you build with it | Production and non-production, on a single node per cluster |
| Where it runs | Where you run it, on servers you rent | Your own Hetzner project, one server per cluster |
| Who keeps it current | You | The PaaSbox portal, through pbx-agent on the node; the server, the cluster and its uptime are yours |
| Who bills you | Nobody: free | Paddle, the merchant of record: the invoice, VAT and sales tax |
| Hetzner bills you directly | Yes | Yes |
| Uptime SLA | No | No |
| Status today | In progress: being prepared for publication; the node images are published | In progress: ran end to end in a lab; not bookable yet |
| Next step | Read the docs | Tell me when it opens |
PaaSbox Clusters
Section titled “PaaSbox Clusters”In progress PaaSbox Clusters is software as a service for k3s clusters that live entirely in your own Hetzner Cloud project, control plane included. The software is the PaaSbox portal, a small agent on the node that opens every connection to the portal itself, signed releases, and the add-ons, Flux and the PaaSbox Platform among them. The portal creates the cluster with your Hetzner API token and keeps it current through the agent. You own the server, the cluster and its uptime. It ran end to end on real Hetzner servers in a lab on 2026-10-10, and it cannot be booked until the portal is live. Tell me when it opens, and I write once it can be booked.
- €29 per cluster per month, incl. VAT, for a single-node cluster: VAT is included where it applies. Outside the EU, $29 plus applicable sales tax. A planned price. The planned billing runs from the moment the cluster is first ready until you delete or detach it.
- Made for several small clusters: one per stage and per app, rather than one large cluster that stages and apps share. Each costs the same price, plus its server at Hetzner.
- Paddle is the merchant of record. You buy the subscription from Paddle, which issues the invoice and handles VAT and sales tax.
- Hetzner bills you directly for the server and everything else in your project.
- For production and non-production. Production here means workloads on one server whose owner accepts three things: there is no SLA, every upgrade reboots the node (in the lab the API was down for 34 seconds, and your apps are down while it restarts), and a broken node is answered by a restore from a snapshot or a rebuild. Clusters with three servers come later, with their own price.
- No SLA. The cluster and its uptime are yours; PaaSbox answers for the software.
| PaaSbox answers for | You own |
|---|---|
| The portal and the node agent behave as documented | The server, the cluster, its availability and your workloads |
| A release is tested before it reaches your cluster | The data in your volumes |
| Operations are safe by default and report their real outcome | The S3 bucket for snapshots, its keys and its lifecycle |
| Safe keeping of your Hetzner token, the S3 keys and the cluster’s server token | The Hetzner bill, and anything changed by hand on a node |
A broken control plane is answered by restoring a snapshot, or by rebuilding the cluster. How it works, with the status of each part →
Setup and consulting
Section titled “Setup and consulting”Today I advise: we talk through how agents may work on your infrastructure, what they may read, what they may change and what a person approves, and we look at how your apps, backups and restores run on Hetzner now.
Planned Setting up the platform in your own Hetzner project comes once the building blocks are published: Kubernetes clusters with Cluster API and k3s, the platform capabilities on top, and your apps connected to their databases, with backups and one restore tried together, handed over as a Git repository that you run yourself. It waits for the publication because your cluster pulls its components from those repositories, and a cluster you run alone must not depend on a private source.
Each engagement has a fixed scope and a price agreed before it starts, billed by invoice. Your servers stay in your own account and are billed to you by Hetzner. What I set up is handed over, and you run it; if you would rather have a cluster kept current by the portal, that is PaaSbox Clusters. A Gardener landscape of your own is not set up as a service; its building blocks are open components, and the Gardener course teaches it. Call me with what you run today and what you want to change.
Later: the managed service
Section titled “Later: the managed service”Planned The managed service is separate from PaaSbox Clusters, which is software you use. In the managed service, agents operate your apps on your clusters, and a person approves where it counts. It starts after the operations agent has run PaaSbox’s own clusters, so that the figures on operated in the open come from real operations first.
It will be priced in two parts:
- per cluster, for the cluster and its control plane;
- per operated app: more for a curated app, which comes with restore drills, upgrade gates and an operate skill; less for a community app, which is installed and monitored.
No prices are set yet, and nothing can be booked. Tell me if you want to be told first, or want to help shape it as a design partner.
Courses
Section titled “Courses”Two live courses are designed: running Kubernetes with Gardener on Hetzner, the next level once one cluster per stage and per app is no longer enough, and Agentic DevOps. A third, AI agents in operations, is drafted. None has a date, and none can be booked yet. The training page has what they cover and what a seat is planned to cost.
What happened to the clusters run for you
Section titled “What happened to the clusters run for you”Until October 2026 this page offered clusters run for you on a Gardener landscape, with a self-service sign-up and list prices. That offer ended: no Gardener landscape runs for customers, PaaSbox does not offer Gardener clusters, and none of the old prices or terms is on offer. The Gardener extensions for Hetzner are open components, and the course teaches how to run a landscape yourself. For clusters in your own project there is PaaSbox Clusters, which ran end to end in a lab and opens once the portal is live. If you had a cluster or asked about one, call me.