European Cloud Computing Alternatives

#1 UpCloud

Helsinki, Finland Founded 2011 From about €5/month (Cloud Server) Trial credits for new customers

Best for: Developers and businesses needing high-performance European infrastructure

UpCloud competes on storage performance, and in cloud infrastructure that is usually what decides whether an application feels fast. UpCloud's proprietary MaxIOPS delivers up to 100,000 IOPS to every cloud server, using a distributed architecture with multiple redundancy layers rather than the shared storage most providers use — which means performance stays consistent regardless of what other tenants are doing. Noisy-neighbour contention is the reason a cheap instance benchmarks well and then stalls under real load, and MaxIOPS removes it. Independent benchmarks repeatedly place UpCloud among the fastest cloud providers globally, ahead of providers many times its size.

UpCloud Ltd is based in Helsinki and runs data centres across Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Poland and Spain, with further regions beyond Europe. Alongside compute it offers managed databases, managed Kubernetes, private networking and load balancers. Pricing starts around €5 per month with traffic billed separately at competitive rates, backed by a 100% uptime SLA, and new customers get credits to benchmark against their own workload before committing. For teams leaving AWS with I/O-bound applications, the price-performance gap is usually the argument that closes it.

Standout feature. MaxIOPS storage: UpCloud is the only provider in this category that guarantees storage performance rather than averaging it, which is why its instances hold speed under load that others lose.

#2 Hetzner

Gunzenhausen, Germany Founded 1997 From about €4.51/month (Cloud VPS) No trial; pay by the hour

Best for: Developers and businesses wanting affordable, reliable EU-hosted infrastructure

Hetzner is the price floor for serious European infrastructure, and the numbers are not close. A cloud server with 2 vCPUs, 4GB RAM and 40GB SSD starts around €4.51 per month — typically three to five times cheaper than the equivalent instance on AWS, Google Cloud or Azure. Most plans include 20TB of outbound traffic at no extra cost, inbound traffic is free, snapshots are cheap, and there are no hidden charges for API calls or data retrieval. That predictability is the real contrast with hyperscaler billing, where the bill grows with success rather than with usage.

Hetzner Online GmbH has operated from Gunzenhausen since 1997 and runs data centres in Germany and Finland, which places it in the EU with intra-EEA processing and outside the reach of the US CLOUD Act. The range covers cloud VPS, dedicated servers, Storage Boxes, managed hosting, load balancers and firewalls. The combination of low price and genuine reliability has made Hetzner the default for cost-conscious developers and bootstrapped startups across Europe, and the loyalty it generates is unusual for infrastructure.

Standout feature. Included egress: Hetzner bundles 20TB of outbound traffic and charges nothing for inbound, which removes the line item that makes hyperscaler bills unpredictable.

#3 Infomaniak

Geneva, Switzerland Founded 1994 From CHF 5.75/month (kSuite); kDrive Solo free Free kDrive Solo tier

Best for: Businesses wanting a Swiss cloud suite instead of Google Workspace

Infomaniak is the only tool in this category that replaces Google Workspace rather than a server. The kSuite ecosystem covers kDrive for cloud storage, kMail for email, kMeet for video conferencing and kChat for messaging, alongside web hosting and domain registration — a complete productivity stack run by one Swiss company rather than assembled from four vendors. kDrive Solo with 15GB is free, which makes the storage half testable at no cost before any commitment.

Infomaniak Network SA has operated from Geneva since 1994 and runs its own data centres in Geneva and Winterthur on 100% renewable energy, holding ISO 27001 certification. Switzerland sits outside the EU with an adequacy decision, which means lawful transfers without standard contractual clauses and no US jurisdiction, though not the intra-EEA footing an EU provider gives. kSuite starts at CHF 5.75 per month per user including email, calendar, contacts, 15GB of kDrive and kMeet. The honest limits are ecosystem size: fewer third-party integrations than Google or Microsoft, mobile apps that trail theirs on polish, and Swiss Franc pricing that moves with the exchange rate for buyers outside Switzerland.

Standout feature. Own data centres on renewable power: Infomaniak builds and runs its own Swiss facilities rather than renting capacity, which is why its sustainability and sovereignty claims are verifiable rather than contractual.

#4 Exoscale

Lausanne, Switzerland Founded 2011 From about CHF 5.50/month (Compute) Trial credits available

Best for: Organisations requiring Swiss data privacy with European infrastructure

Exoscale pairs Swiss privacy with a genuinely developer-oriented platform, and that combination is rarer than it sounds. Exoscale offers compute instances, managed Kubernetes through SKS, S3-compatible object storage, managed databases, DNS and network load balancers — a coherent catalogue rather than an exhaustive one, with an API and tooling built for people who automate their infrastructure rather than click through a console.

Exoscale is based in Lausanne and operates as part of A1 Digital, running data centres in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Bulgaria. That spread matters for latency across central and eastern Europe, which the northern-European providers cover less well. Switzerland's position outside the EU and outside US jurisdiction, combined with an adequacy decision, gives lawful transfers without standard contractual clauses. Pricing starts around CHF 5.50 per month for compute with trial credits available. The catalogue is smaller than a hyperscaler's, so organisations with niche service requirements should confirm availability before committing.

Standout feature. Central and eastern European regions: Exoscale is the only provider here with data centres in both Austria and Bulgaria, which changes latency for workloads serving that half of the continent.

#5 IONOS

Montabaur, Germany Founded 1988 From about €1/month Free tier options

Best for: Businesses wanting European cloud infrastructure with a sustainability commitment

IONOS is the largest hosting provider in Europe and has been at it longer than almost anyone here, which for infrastructure is a purchasing criterion rather than trivia. The range spans cloud infrastructure and DevOps tooling through web hosting to domain registration and digital identity services, so a business can consolidate what it would otherwise split between a cloud provider and a registrar. Pricing starts around €1 per month for entry offerings, with transparent pay-as-you-go and committed-use discounts rather than the multi-dimensional billing that makes hyperscaler costs hard to forecast.

IONOS SE is based in Montabaur, Germany, and runs data centres in Germany, the UK and Spain on 100% renewable energy, holding ISO 27001 certification. As a German company it sits in the EU with intra-EEA processing and outside the reach of the US CLOUD Act. The breadth is both the appeal and the caveat: IONOS serves a very wide market from individual domain buyers to enterprise cloud customers, and the developer experience is not as focused as UpCloud's or Scaleway's.

Standout feature. Scale plus green power: IONOS is the only provider here running Europe's largest hosting footprint entirely on renewable energy, which is a different claim from offsetting it.

#6 Scaleway

Paris, France Founded 1999 From about €0.0025/hour (DEV1-S) Pay by the hour, no commitment

Best for: Developers needing EU-only infrastructure with GPU and serverless options

Scaleway is the most complete modern cloud catalogue in this category that keeps every data centre inside the EU. VPS, managed Kubernetes, S3-compatible object storage, serverless functions, managed databases and — unusually for a European provider — real GPU instances for AI and machine learning workloads. For a team that wants to train or serve models without sending the workload to a US-established provider, Scaleway is the practical option here rather than one of several.

Scaleway is based in Paris and is part of the Iliad Group, with data centres in Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw. All three are in the EU, so data never leaves EU jurisdiction and the company is not subject to US law including the CLOUD Act. Pricing is hourly and transparent from about €0.0025 per hour for a DEV1-S instance, with no hidden egress fees at reasonable volumes and committed-use and volume discounts available. The catalogue is smaller than a hyperscaler's and support leans on community forums and documentation at the lower tiers, with dedicated support reserved for enterprise customers.

Standout feature. GPU instances inside EU-only regions: Scaleway is the one provider here where AI training and inference can run at scale without any data leaving EU jurisdiction.

#7 Cyso Cloud

Alkmaar, Netherlands Founded 1997 Transparent usage-based, no lock-in Contact for trial

Best for: Regulated organisations needing sovereign Dutch cloud with managed Kubernetes

Cyso Cloud is built for the buyer whose compliance officer reads the contract first. It is 100% Dutch and independently owned, running from three data centres in Amsterdam and Frankfurt, and holds ISO 27001 plus NEN 7510 — the Dutch standard for information security in healthcare. That second certification is what makes Cyso Cloud a clean fit for healthcare, finance and government, where GDPR compliance alone does not close the procurement question. Because the company is Dutch-owned and EU-based, there is no conflict between European data protection principles and foreign surveillance law.

The flagship service is managed Kubernetes with a 99.9% SLA, where Cyso handles implementation, management, maintenance and monitoring of the cluster so development teams never touch the control plane. Alongside it sit S3-compatible object storage, load balancers, cloud compute, managed databases, DNS and a transactional email service. The platform is OpenStack-based and open by philosophy, so the APIs are standard rather than proprietary. Pricing is transparent and usage-based with no lock-in. As a focused Dutch provider it runs fewer regions than the hyperscalers, and some newer services such as Cloud Databases and IAM are still in beta.

Standout feature. NEN 7510 certification: Cyso Cloud is the only provider in this category certified against the Dutch healthcare information security standard, which is a procurement requirement GDPR alone does not satisfy.

#8 OVHcloud

Roubaix, France Founded 1999 From about €3.50/month (VPS) Pay as you go

Best for: Businesses needing a comprehensive European cloud with sovereignty certification

OVHcloud owns its stack from the metal up, and that is the basis of its sovereignty claim. OVHcloud designs and builds its own servers and operates them in its own data centres, so no third party has access to the physical infrastructure — vertical integration that is unique among major cloud providers. It is a founding member of GAIA-X, the European federated data infrastructure initiative, and offers public cloud, private cloud, bare metal, managed Kubernetes, web hosting and domain registration from more than 30 data centres, the majority in Europe.

OVHcloud SAS is based in Roubaix, France. The qualification that separates it from everything else here is SecNumCloud, certified by ANSSI, the French national cybersecurity agency: data processed exclusively on French territory, by French staff, under French jurisdiction. That is a level above standard GDPR compliance and is why OVHcloud appears in government, healthcare and financial procurement where GDPR is not a sufficient answer on its own. VPS pricing starts around €3.50 per month, and the global footprint means workloads needing presence outside Europe do not require a second provider.

Standout feature. SecNumCloud: OVHcloud is the only provider in this category holding a national sovereignty qualification that guarantees which country's staff can touch the data, not just where it sits.

#9 gridscale

Cologne, Germany Founded 2014 From about €5/month (Cloud Server), billed per minute Trial available

Best for: German businesses, agencies and MSPs wanting easy-to-use cloud infrastructure

gridscale competes on how the cloud feels to operate rather than on what it costs. The control panel is genuinely designed: creating a server takes a few clicks and resources scale up or down in real time without downtime. The platform uses a building-block model where compute, storage and network resources combine freely instead of forcing a choice between predefined instance types, and everything is billed per minute — which makes it unusually cost-efficient for variable workloads and development environments that do not run overnight.

gridscale GmbH is based in Cologne and runs data centres in Frankfurt and Cologne, keeping data in Germany with intra-EEA processing. The catalogue covers cloud servers, managed Kubernetes, S3-compatible storage, managed databases and load balancers, with full API access, Terraform support and German-language support. The distinguishing commercial feature is the partner programme: agencies and managed service providers can resell gridscale under their own brand with custom pricing and white-label options, which is why gridscale often sits inside another company's offering rather than being bought directly. Pricing starts around €5 per month.

Standout feature. White-label reselling: gridscale is the only provider here built to be sold under someone else's brand, which is why agencies and MSPs can offer cloud without building infrastructure.

#10 Contabo

Munich, Germany Founded 2003 From about €4.50/month (VPS) No trial

Best for: Cost-conscious developers needing generous resources for the money

Contabo sells more machine per euro than anything else in this category, and the gap is not marginal. The entry VPS gives 4 vCPU physical cores, 8GB RAM, 50GB NVMe storage and 200TB of monthly traffic from about €4.50 per month — a configuration that costs two to four times as much at most competitors. Crucially, those are physical CPU cores rather than the heavily oversubscribed virtual cores common in the industry, so the benchmark holds up rather than degrading under contention. The 200TB traffic allowance is effectively unlimited outside media streaming, which removes the overage anxiety that comes with usage-based providers.

Contabo GmbH has operated from Munich since 2003 and runs 12 data centre locations including Germany, the UK, the US, Singapore, Japan and Australia — the widest global spread of the German providers here, which suits workloads serving users outside Europe. NVMe storage is standard across the range and DDoS protection is included. The trade-offs are real and predictable: the control panel and automation are more basic than premium providers, support is adequate rather than SLA-backed, and provisioning can take longer than at fully automated providers, particularly during high-demand periods.

Standout feature. 200TB of included traffic: Contabo is the only provider here where bandwidth effectively stops being a cost line, which is why it dominates game servers, CDN origins and media workloads.

#11 Lucity

Switzerland Founded 2024 Free self-hosted; Lucity Cloud 14-day trial with €5 credits 14-day free trial

Best for: Teams wanting Heroku-style deployment without vendor lock-in

Lucity is the only platform-as-a-service in this category, and the only one that treats leaving as a product feature. Lucity deploys GitHub repositories to production on Kubernetes and handles builds, containers, databases and domains, so a team ships code without operating servers. The differentiator is the eject button: most managed platforms make leaving painful by design, wiring applications into proprietary build systems and config formats. Lucity exports standard Helm charts and ArgoCD configurations — the actual portable artefacts it runs on underneath — so an entire setup lifts onto any Kubernetes cluster and keeps running. That makes "no lock-in" testable rather than a claim.

Lucity is built by zeitlos.software, a Swiss company, and released under AGPL-3.0; Lucity Cloud is hosted in Germany. Self-hosting is free, and Lucity Cloud offers a 14-day trial with €5 in credits. The honest assessment is that this is a young platform: a smaller community, less independent operating history and a thinner ecosystem than the US incumbents it replaces, and considerably less than raw Kubernetes with mature tooling. The self-hosted path still assumes comfort with Kubernetes concepts, and teams with demanding uptime, scale or support requirements should evaluate SLAs, regions and pricing directly before betting production on it.

Standout feature. The eject button: Lucity is the only platform in this category that hands you the exact Helm charts and ArgoCD configs it runs on, so migrating away is a copy rather than a rewrite.