TL/DR OVH is the only European competitor of AWS, Google Cloud or Azure in terms of variety of services.
And it's not exactly there either. If you only use EC2 and databases you can find some, not many, alternatives.
UPDATE 2021: Many of this providers have updated their offerings since 2019, including managed databases,
networking (load balancers and such) etc. The situation has changed, and although IMO it's still not Matching
AWS, the situation has improved significantly, as most of them didn't go beyond virtual servers a couple years
ago.
I've updated the descriptions accordingly.
UPDATE 2026: The landscape continues to evolve rapidly. European providers have seriously stepped up
their game, particularly offering Managed Kubernetes, GPU servers for AI workloads, and highly competitive
networking features like Zero-cost Egress to challenge the "Big 3". I've updated the relevant providers to
reflect these new capabilities.
I wanted to move some of my operations to Europe because I was concerned by the data I stored in my US servers, being Amazon AWS and Digital Ocean my current providers. Sometimes the jurisdiction of your servers are as important as the price you pay for them.
I don't want to waste your time, here's what I gathered.
| Domain | Type | HQs | + Info |
|---|---|---|---|
| upcloud.com | AWS-Like / DO-Like | Finland | They have grown massively. They now offer Managed Kubernetes, GPU Servers for AI/ML, Private Clouds, and a complete networking suite (SDN, Load Balancers, VPN/NAT Gateways). A huge competitive advantage is their Zero-cost Egress (free outbound data transfers), which makes them extremely attractive compared to AWS. |
| arubacloud.com | DO-Like | Italy | The absolute giant of the Italian market. They have historically been known for aggressive pricing (like their famous 1€ VPS). Currently offering Managed Kubernetes, Networking, DBaaS, AI GPUs, hybrid cloud setups, etc. Their offer is solid, but the website is a bit of a mess, like OVH. |
| ovh.com | AWS-like | France | They've expanded way beyond OpenStack and basic VPS, now offering enterprise-grade solutions like Managed Nutanix, SAP HANA, and VMware, alongside a full AI suite (Endpoints, Notebooks) and even Quantum Computing Emulators. It still shares something I dislike about AWS: a notoriously confusing management panel. OVH is massive globally, bandwidth is basically free compared to AWS, and they offer high-compliance (SecNumCloud) infrastructure. Support can still be a mixed bag, though. |
| Scaleway.com | DO-Like | France | Another cheap French supplier. Beyond trying to compete with DO, they have grown into a massive ecosystem. They are heavily investing in AI (Serverless Generative APIs, massive NVIDIA H100/B300 GPU clusters) and experimental hardware, being the first to offer cloud-based RISC-V servers and Quantum-as-a-Service. They even rent Apple Mac mini M4s. The management panel remains incredibly developer-friendly and easy to understand, something you'll appreciate if you hate to spend time learning stupid acronyms. |
| Exoscale.com | DO-Like | Switzerland | They now offer OpenAI-compatible APIs, production-ready inference endpoints, and Managed Vector Databases for RAG. They also run liquid-cooled NVIDIA GPUs with heat reuse. For standard workloads, they offer Managed Grafana, Kubernetes, Kafka, OpenSearch, and Valkey. If this anecdata is of any use to you, CERN has contracted its services. |
| Hetzner.com/cloud | DO-Like | Germany | Still the reigning champion of budget-friendly raw performance. They do a lot of custom stuff for that (rack
mounts, ventilation systems, hardware). They now offer ARM-based servers, although they still notably
lack native managed database services, forcing you to manage them yourself or use third-party tools. A
curious fact is that the game Krunker.io seems to be on top of Hetzner. They also opened a US location, which worried some people regarding data jurisdiction, more here. |
| scalingo.com | Heroku-like | France | This one really looks nice. Everyone I've talked to about your service is happy. The offer is good. You have containers, databases (Redis, MongoDB, ElasticSearch and InfluxDB included) and networking. Prices are okay. |
| clouding.io/en | VPS | Spain | The offer is very simple, only VPS, although the configuration is very flexible. They also offer Windows 2016 Datacenter for a small fee (+3€/month), which may be interesting for some uses. Personally I have used them for some side-projects, and it works fine. |
| fortrabbit.com | Heroku-Like | Germany | Similar to Heroky and Scalingo, but for PHP. Sadly, it only offers MySQL and it's really running on top of AWS |
| clever-cloud.com | Heroku-Like | France | A fantastic European PaaS alternative that arguably offers more than Heroku today. Beyond their "git push" deployment and immutable infrastructure, they offer a true pay-as-you-go pricing model (no rigid "dyno" tiers), zero egress fees, and native support for almost any language (Rust, Elixir, Go, Haskell). Their ecosystem is massive, including Managed PostgreSQL, Pulsar, Redis, S3-compatible Object Storage (Cellar), and they boast extreme compliance (HDS for health data and SecNumCloud). |
| infomaniak.com | AWS-Like / DO-Like | Switzerland | The great eco-friendly and independent rival to Exoscale in Switzerland. They've made a massive push into Public Cloud (based on OpenStack). They are 100% powered by renewable energy and also offer a privacy-first productivity suite that aims to rival Google Workspace. |
| stackit.de | AWS-Like | Germany | The Lidl Cloud. Yes, you read that right. The Schwarz Group (owners of Lidl and Kaufland supermarkets) built their own OpenStack cloud to avoid relying on Amazon or US providers. It was so successful they opened it to the public. It is designed to be a 100% sovereign European cloud, heavily targeted at Enterprise and public sectors requiring strict GDPR compliance. |
Global Points of Presence (POPs)
If you need to deploy close to your users globally, here is a quick overview of the geographical footprint of these providers outside of Europe (as of 2026).
| Provider | Total POPs | N. America | S. America | Asia | Africa |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UpCloud 🔗 | 15 | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Aruba Cloud 🔗 | 10 | No | No | No | No |
| OVHcloud 🔗 | 40+ | Yes | ~ Yes | Yes | ~ Yes |
| Scaleway 🔗 | 4 | No | No | No | No |
| Exoscale 🔗 | 8 | No | No | No | No |
| Hetzner 🔗 | 6 | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Scalingo 🔗 | 4 | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Clouding.io 🔗 | 1 | No | No | No | No |
| Fortrabbit 🔗 | No Info | No Info | No Info | No Info | No Info |
| Clever Cloud 🔗 | 8 | Yes | No | Yes | Dubai |
| Infomaniak 🔗 | No Info | No Info | No Info | No Info | No Info |
| STACKIT 🔗 | No Info | No Info | No Info | No Info | No Info |
Other interesting services:
| Domain | Type | HQs | + Info |
|---|---|---|---|
| cloud.yandex.com | Google-Like | Russia | CRITICAL UPDATE 2026: Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent international
sanctions, using Russian cloud providers like Yandex is highly unadvisable for Western individuals and
businesses due to severe compliance, legal, and data privacy risks. Historically, Yandex was interesting because of its massive Google-like ecosystem. However, the geopolitical situation has completely altered the viability of using their services if you operate within the EU or US jurisdiction. |
| alibabacloud.com | AWS-Like | China | Obviously in China they were not going to stay out of this market. Alibaba's offer is obviously not appealing to those who are concerned about what is done with their data, but the truth is that it is very complete, and I would say that, at least on paper, it can compete with AWS. Personally I haven't tried it, and I don't think I will. If one day I have a website aimed at the Chinese market I probably host it in Singapore or something like that, despite 'their handholding offer for chinese bureaucracy'. |
There are many more companies out there, but the truth is that the offers didn't seem too appealing to me, if only they were limited to selling old-fashioned VPS blocks.
In any case, the reality is that no one in Europe competes with AWS, Google Cloud or Azure with the same range of services and integration (Well, maybe Yandex if we consider Russia). OVH is approaching, and really if you wanted to set up your own Kafka-type service you could, but really the appeal of these providers is to save you that work.
Surely governments and big companies have access to services that the rest of us mortals don't have (for example, through companies like Atos, Indra, DT, etc), but I have no way to evaluate them, and I couldn't hire them anyway.
If you know more companies, please share it with me on @iagovar (twitter).