If Amsterdam is Europe's north-western hub, Frankfurt is its centre of gravity. It is closer than Amsterdam or London to southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechia, Poland and northern Italy, and it hosts the European internet exchange with the most networks listed in PeeringDB. This guide puts numbers on both, shows who should pick Frankfurt over Amsterdam, and lists what a Frankfurt dedicated server from NexonHost costs today.
The exchange that defines Frankfurt
DE-CIX Frankfurt is the reason Frankfurt matters to hosting. PeeringDB, the public database where networks list where they peer, showed on 2 October 2026:
| Exchange or facility | Networks present | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| DE-CIX Frankfurt | 1,018 | Listed at 26 facilities, most in the Frankfurt metro |
| Equinix FR4 (the building NexonHost uses) | 113 | 9 internet exchanges reachable in the building |
That is the highest count of any exchange in Europe in PeeringDB; on the same day AMS-IX listed 853 networks and LINX LON1 in London 837. For a server in Frankfurt, that density means the networks your users sit on are very likely present in the same city, so the physical path to them is short. How directly your traffic reaches them depends on which exchanges and carriers your provider connects to, so ask before you buy: an exchange only helps through the networks your provider actually peers with.
Frankfurt is also Germany's financial centre, home to the European Central Bank and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
How far Frankfurt is from your users
Light in fibre covers about 200 km per millisecond, so over fibre the great-circle distance divided by 100 is close to the best possible round-trip time. Real routes are longer, so treat these as lower bounds. Each cell shows the distance and, in brackets, that round-trip floor.
| City | From Frankfurt | From Amsterdam |
|---|---|---|
| Zurich | 304 km (3.0 ms) | 613 km (6.1 ms) |
| Munich | 305 km (3.0 ms) | 668 km (6.7 ms) |
| Hamburg | 393 km (3.9 ms) | 365 km (3.7 ms) |
| Prague | 411 km (4.1 ms) | 711 km (7.1 ms) |
| Berlin | 424 km (4.2 ms) | 576 km (5.8 ms) |
| Paris | 478 km (4.8 ms) | 430 km (4.3 ms) |
| Milan | 518 km (5.2 ms) | 829 km (8.3 ms) |
| Vienna | 598 km (6.0 ms) | 935 km (9.4 ms) |
| London | 638 km (6.4 ms) | 358 km (3.6 ms) |
| Budapest | 811 km (8.1 ms) | 1,145 km (11.4 ms) |
| Warsaw | 890 km (8.9 ms) | 1,093 km (10.9 ms) |
Frankfurt is closer for every city in the table except Hamburg, Paris and London. Amsterdam's lead for Hamburg and Paris is a few dozen kilometres, which real routing can easily reverse, so measure from your users' networks; for London it is almost 300 km. The two cities are only 363 km apart, so for an audience spread across Germany and the Benelux the difference is a few milliseconds either way.
Who should choose a Frankfurt dedicated server
- DACH businesses. Customers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland are all within about 7 ms at the physical limit. Munich and Zurich are about 300 km away, a 3 ms round-trip floor.
- Central and Eastern European audiences. Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Warsaw are all meaningfully closer to Frankfurt than to Amsterdam. For users further east, a server in Warsaw or Sofia may be closer still.
- Contracts that say "Germany". Some contracts specify hosting in Germany rather than anywhere in the EU. Amsterdam does not meet that clause; Frankfurt does. EU data residency explains how to tell a GDPR question from a national one.
- Payment and fintech integrations. Workloads that talk to banks and payment processors hosted in Frankfurt get a physically short path to them.
Where Frankfurt is the wrong answer
The UK and Ireland. London is 638 km from Frankfurt and 358 km from Amsterdam. If British or Irish users are your largest group, Amsterdam or Dublin will serve them better. Dedicated Server Netherlands vs Germany compares the two hubs directly.
Iberia and Latin America. Madrid is over 1,400 km away. Madrid vs Frankfurt works through when a Spanish server pays for itself.
South-eastern Europe. Sofia and Bucharest are roughly 1,400 to 1,450 km from Frankfurt, and NexonHost sells in both.
Frankfurt dedicated server builds and prices
Seven of the eight dedicated configurations can be ordered in Frankfurt; the AMD EPYC 7702 is available only in Bucharest.
| Build | Cores / threads | RAM | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2× Intel Xeon E5-2630 v4 | 20 / 40 | 128 GB | €129 |
| 2× Intel Xeon E5-2690 v4 | 28 / 56 | 128 GB | €249 |
| 2× Intel Xeon E5-2699 v4 | 44 / 88 | 256 GB | €425 |
| 1× AMD EPYC 9254 | 24 / 48 | 128 GB | €449 |
| 2× AMD EPYC 9254 | 48 / 96 | 256 GB | €679 |
| 2× AMD EPYC 9554 | 128 / 256 | 512 GB | €959 |
| 2× AMD EPYC 9754 | 256 / 512 | 1,024 GB | €1,519 |
Every price includes a 1 Gbps unmetered port, 40 Gbps / 4 Mpps of layer 4 DDoS mitigation and one IPv4 address. The Xeon builds provision automatically in minutes; the EPYC builds carry an estimated delivery of about two weeks. Ports scale to 20 Gbps on the Xeon builds and up to 100 Gbps on the larger EPYC builds. Xeon vs EPYC helps you choose a row.
Frankfurt or Amsterdam: a quick decision
- List the five cities or regions that bring you the most traffic or revenue.
- For each, check which of the two hubs is closer, from the table above or the great-circle distance.
- If the answer is split, remember the two cities are only 363 km apart: no user anywhere gains more than 3.6 ms of round-trip floor by choosing one over the other, so for most workloads decide on price, build availability or contract terms.
- If one group is far from both, add a second server near that group instead of compromising on one.
Where to order
A Frankfurt dedicated server from NexonHost starts at €129 a month in Equinix FR4, with an unmetered port and DDoS mitigation included. Every build available in the city, with Frankfurt preselected, is on the Germany dedicated server page, and all eight builds are on the dedicated servers page.
Specifications and pricing are as of 2 October 2026. Check the product pages for current figures.
Sources
- DE-CIX Frankfurt, PeeringDB: 1,018 networks, 26 facilities. Retrieved 2 October 2026.
- Equinix FR4, PeeringDB: 113 networks, 9 exchanges. Retrieved 2 October 2026.
- AMS-IX and LINX LON1, PeeringDB: 853 and 837 networks. Retrieved 2 October 2026.
- NexonHost store configurator: builds, locations, port options and prices. Retrieved 2 October 2026.
- Germany dedicated server, NexonHost: delivery estimates. Retrieved 2 October 2026.
- Computed: great-circle distances from city-centre coordinates; round-trip floor = distance ÷ 100 km/ms (light in fibre at ~200 km/ms, both directions); Frankfurt–Amsterdam is 363 km, so no location can be more than 3.6 ms of round-trip floor closer to one than the other.
