European Cloud Computing Platforms
54 comments
·March 10, 2025svilen_dobrev
check prices etc. for some of these here: https://cloudoptimizer.io/
pbowyer
UpCloud are good, and I've used them for over 5 years. They aren't cheap compared to DigitalOcean/Linode (everything is extra €€€) but when I benchmarked the providers before picking them their CPU and disk IO was faster than the other cloud platforms. The internal network has been more reliable than every time I've used DigitalOcean's.
All this is for London data centres. It'd be interesting to re-benchmark them against other providers.
joshvm
I would add CloudFerro, used by ESA and several other European satellite data providers.
https://cloudferro.com/pricing/pricing-tables/waw3-1-cloud/v...
Re the sibling comment they do offer trial credit, but I have explored the terms. I don't think there's a recurring free tier though.
drpossum
I don't recommend IONOS as they require a phone call to cancel any services and their billing system was inconsistent with the documentation (at least when I tried it recently).
Also this list not including Hetzner is deeply shameful.
bertman
In the second paragraph, it says:
>Hosters with a focus on virtual servers, are only listed in the category virtual private server (VPS) hosters.
>https://european-alternatives.eu/category/vps-virtual-privat...
Hetzner is the very first entry in that category.
drpossum
I stand corrected. My complaints about IONOS still stand.
andrewstuart
I do recommend IONOS as they provide cheap powerful machines with unlimited traffic.
drpossum
lol if you believe the marketing gimmick of "unlimited traffic". Where do you think you are?
denniebee
The tricky thing about these services is that they often cannot compete on price or on capability. The scale and mature feature sets of US based cloud providers outweigh the benefits of keeping it within European ownership for most commercial organizations. For Europe to truly compete, they shouldn't copy IaaS models, but come up with new innovative PaaS models in yet to develop markets, such as XR or internet-decentralization. Those markets provide a chance to go in front at an early stage and with enough dedication of both the EU government and the European business community, this can be a start to differentiate itself from the US and China.
Tenoke
Hetzner has been the cheapest big option when you just want raw servers for at least a decade, and e.g. Scaleway is pretty similar in price to US based providers.
flessner
I have used both of them in the past, pricing is indeed very competitive - there are very few providers coming close to Hetzner pricing on dedicated servers.
There's also OVH, they have plenty of global regions, but I haven't used them yet.
badestrand
Hetzner half-heartetly started to offer database hosting as well but they need a lot more services and present them on eye level with the servers.
I a am huge Hetzner fan and waiting for years already for them to expand their offering.
rbanffy
UpCloud also seems quite cheap - 1 vCPU and 1GB of RAM, 10GB disk for €3/month and €4.5 for 20GB disk.
Puts
"for most commercial organizations"
Most commercial organizations are not "internet" companies. They can run their business on a single VPS. Even e-commerce sites with several million euro turnover can run their Magento instance on a single VPS. Or industries manufacturing things can still run their inventory software or ERP stuff on some cheap VPS.
rbanffy
> for most commercial organizations
The overwhelming majority of commercial organizations don't even have a registered domain. They pass well under our radars because they'd never hire any of us for help.
Last one who asked me, a fertility clinic, wanted a blog, so I registered a domain for them, set up Google services (back then it was free for their org size - something like 5 people), Wordpress, their payment accounts, and that was it. Apart from e-mail and shared documents, they had zero cloud presence. If they wanted to self-host their blog (something I would discourage) they'd need nothing more than a single tiny instance behind Cloudflare.
mvc
> The scale and mature feature sets of US based cloud providers outweigh the benefits of keeping it within European ownership for most commercial organizations.
That's what companies thought about manufacturing in China. But that was before they found out the costs of corruption and loss of trade secrets. If you're a fantastically succesfuly European company, what's to stop Trump (or any future president) just deciding you're too big and need to be sold to "an american investor"?
It is high time for companies and banks to invest only where democracy thrives because when you invest where it doesn't, your investment simply ends up being controlled by gangsters. This might benefit you for a while. But eventually, it won't.
comice
Democracy is the rule of the people.
Companies and banks aren't interested in investing where the people have power. They want to invest where the companies and banks themselves have power.
So long as the companies and banks can influence the gangsters, they don't care.
genewitch
Do you think the United States isn't a democracy?
I mean, it isn't. It's a constitutional republic, but answer the question.
pezezin
I don't know what you guys mean by "constitutional republic", but in the rest of the world "republic" just means "not a monarchy".
mrpgraae
This is like saying that a hamster isn't a mammal because it's a rodent.
dns_snek
The US isn't democratically governed, it's an oligarchy that's dressed up as a democracy. It has some essential ingredients of a representative democracy like holding elections to give the system an aura of legitimacy, but the entire back-end of this "democratic process" is quite obviously rotten due to decades of corruption. Most of that could probably be attributed back to the involvement of big money interests in politics.
sanxiyn
Scaleway is pretty competitive.
KronisLV
There's also Contabo: https://contabo.com/en/about-us/
They have mixed reputation in some cases, but honestly their pricing is great for side projects and such, maybe even running a small/medium business as long as it's within their ToS.
concerndc1tizen
Contabo is garbage. They'll scam you with every trick in the book.
jadtz
As far as I am aware Contabo has a pretty bad reputation and not a mixed reputation.
alanfranz
Shameless plug (I’m an employee): If you need advanced services beyond vms/block storage/object storage from your cloud (i.e. databases, kafka, opensearch) also check out aiven.io . We support many EU cloud providers.
mrtksn
One thing about the EU based platforms is that they tend to have much more limited free tier, often there's none.
IMHO the deep pockets of the US based tech is their primary competitive advantage. In other countries they seem to try to make a bit of money every month but in USA they tend to aim to make a lot of money at once down the road. I'm under the impression that when non-US services end up failing, US based ones end up enshitified.
So the EU based stuff stays about the same for many years, the US based stuff starts as we are saving the world, democratizing the technology and doing all this for free(*) and then your bill jumps 100x or your experience goes 100x down.
rmoriz
But e.g. Hetzner, OVH and Ionos are so cheap, you can easily keep a project alive for years until it gets traction or break even. Paying like 50€ a month is peanuts.
mrtksn
On AWS or Google Cloud or Firebase you pay $0 a month until you start paying thousands of dollars per month. This makes the brands ubiquitous and developers knowledgeable of the platform. It's like having free MS Office subscription for free when in school, so everyone who graduates ends up knowing the MS tools and it's not feasible to switch to competitor.
sam_lowry_
Shouldn't this be illegal?
Price dumping in international trade is already illegal, like when China floods the market with electric cars and solar panels.
And I only wonder why EU has put up so long with price dumping in other domains. Like the whole Microsoft world domination strategy that was made possible by intentionally lousy enforcement of its IP.
codingbot3000
If you look closer, you can see that the free tier is mostly covering SaaS in order to lock you into their APIs. The free tier for VMs isn't that generous.
For a startup, locking into an API that is initially free can often break their neck in the long run. Because for a startup, switching providers is a big distraction. It's often better to run VMs or colocated servers on an OSS stack.
I'd argue that OVH (European) is the cost leader for that in every market they are in.
notpushkin
You can use cloud while you have free credits – just spend them on a beefy AWS Lightsail server or something like that. Then pack it up and move to a cheaper provider.
DaveMcMartin
I use Contabo for my personal projects, not on the list, they are from Germany.
My company uses OVH and I have also used UpCloud, it is pretty good.
throw0101b
Don't forget about on-prem / private cloud:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStack
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_CloudStack
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_cloud_computing_infras...
notpushkin
Also don’t forget you might be fine with just a VPS (or a few)!
pkstn
UpCloud is really good!
I hope we're going to see a move to more cloud agnostic stacks. I'm currently running Patroni between Hetzner and Netcup, with an Amazon Lightsail VPS as a third etcd member. If Hetzner decides to flag my account, the hot standby on Netcup will take over (or the other way around, as I switch on a weekly basis). Still using Amazon with AWS SES and Route53 but these can be replaced by other parties if need be.