Hetzner vs Scaleway

Hetzner and Scaleway both rent cloud servers from Europe, but they present themselves differently. Hetzner's cloud page highlights low prices, generous included traffic, three plan families and data centres in Germany and Finland plus Oregon, Virginia and Singapore. Scaleway describes a broader catalogue of over 100 products, 4 multi-AZ regions in Europe and 5,000+ GPUs. Hetzner's prices did not render for our checks, so the price comparison is incomplete.

Written by Sebastiaan Smits Edited by Daniel Brandt Fact-checked by Marta Kowalczyk

Published Last reviewed How we review

Choose Hetzner if

you mainly need straightforward virtual servers and storage, like hourly billing with a monthly price cap, and want European locations in Germany and Finland.

Read the Hetzner review

Choose Scaleway if

you need a wider product range such as GPUs, managed databases or containers, or want availability zones in Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw.

Read the Scaleway review

Hetzner and Scaleway side by side

 HetznerScaleway
Company Hetzner Online GmbH Scaleway (Iliad Group)
Headquarters Gunzenhausen, Germany Paris, France
Founded 1997 1999
Jurisdiction EU (Germany) EU (France)
Where the data sits Germany (Falkenstein, Nuremberg) and Finland (Helsinki), plus Oregon, Virginia and Singapore Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw — EU only
Pricing From about €4.51/month (Cloud VPS) From about €0.0025/hour (DEV1-S)
Entry-level list price (vendor site, checked 8 October 2026) Not verified: prices did not render on the page when checked (hourly rate with a monthly cap per Hetzner docs) DEV1-S (2 vCPUs, 2 GB): EUR 0.00898/hour, about EUR 6.55/month (Paris, virtual instances page; VAT treatment not stated)
Free tier or trial No trial; pay by the hour Pay by the hour, no commitment
Certifications and checks ISO 27001 Not stated in our data
Source code Closed source Closed source
Usually replaces AWS, DigitalOcean AWS, Google Cloud, Azure
Position in our Cloud Computing guide #2 of 13 #6 of 13

Both are listed in our European Cloud Computing guide. The table is built from the same directory data as those entries, except the list price, which is quoted from each vendor's own pricing page (see Sources below); how we check it is described in the editorial process.

Where Hetzner and Scaleway differ

Across the five points below, Hetzner has the edge on 1 point, Scaleway on 2 points and 2 are a tie. A count like that is a summary, not a verdict: the point that matters to you may be the one the other product wins.

Price transparency

Scaleway's virtual instances page lists prices per hour with an approximate monthly figure, for example DEV1-S (2 vCPUs, 2 GB, 200 Mbps) at EUR 0.00898 an hour, about EUR 6.55 a month, in Paris. Hetzner's page said 'starting from max/mo' without figures when we checked, so we cannot compare. Hetzner's docs state each server has a monthly price cap and an hourly rate.

Edge: Scaleway

Locations

Hetzner lists Falkenstein and Nuremberg in Germany, Helsinki in Finland, Hillsboro (Oregon) and Ashburn (Virginia) in the USA, and Singapore. Scaleway's availability table shows Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw with 3 availability zones each, and Milan with 1.

No clear winner on this point.

Product range

Scaleway lists bare metal, virtual instances, GPU instances, containers, serverless, object, block and file storage, load balancers, managed databases and AI services. Hetzner's page shows cloud servers, Object Storage (S3-compatible) and Storage Box for backups.

Edge: Scaleway

Plan structure

Hetzner groups cloud servers into Cost-Optimized, Regular Performance and General Purpose, and says included traffic is generous. Scaleway splits instances into Development, General Purpose, Compute Optimized and Memory Optimized. Hetzner's grouping is simpler, though we could not read its numbers.

Edge: Hetzner

Data protection paperwork

Hetzner's docs explain its data processing agreement and technical and organisational measures under GDPR. Scaleway's home page markets data sovereignty and three availability zones per region. Neither claim replaces reading the actual contract for your workload.

No clear winner on this point.

When neither Hetzner nor Scaleway fits

If neither suits you, our cloud computing guide also lists UpCloud and OVHcloud, with other regions and pricing models.

Hetzner vs Scaleway: questions

We could not confirm Hetzner's current prices, because its cloud page did not render figures when checked. Scaleway lists DEV1-S at EUR 0.00898 an hour, about EUR 6.55 a month. Compare equal specs on both pricing pages, and check whether VAT is included.

Hetzner: Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki, Hillsboro, Ashburn and Singapore. Scaleway's availability table lists Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw (3 availability zones each) and Milan (1).

Scaleway's home page says it has 5,000+ GPUs and names L40S, L4, H100 and B300-SXM instances. We saw no GPU product on Hetzner's cloud page.

Scaleway prices instances per hour. Hetzner's docs say servers have an hourly price and a monthly cap, so the bill never exceeds the monthly price.

Sources

Facts, prices and plan details on this page were checked on the vendors' own websites on . Prices and plans change; the vendor's current page is authoritative.

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