I also run Kubernetes on Hetzner and created my nodes prior to two price hikes.

Here's how expenses look and would look if I recreated it today:

  Control Plane   3xCX23  @ €3.99  = €11.97    @ €6.49  = €19.47
  Worker nodes    3xCX33  @ €6.49  = €19.47    @ €9.99  = €29.97
  NAT gateway     1xCPX22 @ €7.99  = €7.99     @ €30.99 = €30.99
  Load Balancers  2xLB11  @ €7.49  = €14.98    @ €9.36  = €18.72
  Hetzner Volumes 240GB   @ €0.044 = €10.56    @ €0.044 = €10.56
  ------------------------------------------------------------
  Total per month                    €64.97               €109.71

Even with the new prices, this is almost twice as cheap as Scaleway for comparable hardware.

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Only the NAT gateway and the LBs have public IPv4 addresses.

The CPX22 NAT gateway is a little overkill, but I was experimenting with making it both the NAT gateway and the load balancer, and I figured I needed dedicated CPU cores to handle inbound traffic. It was an attempt to cut the cost of Hetzner's own LBs, if it proved to scale. I haven't got around to that part, but today the economics wouldn't add up: LBs are cheaper and less work.

This is Talos Linux: https://talos.dev

Talos can be upgraded via talosctl, so even less maintenance than k3s.

The NAT gateway effectively is a bastion host and would serve fine as a VPN gateway.

The nodes themselves can join a tailnet,