Hetzner vs Scaleway: European Cloud Hosting Compared

When European companies discuss moving away from AWS or Google Cloud, two names come up more than any others: Hetzner and Scaleway. Both are independently owned, both operate data centres exclusively within Europe, and both have built loyal followings among developers and infrastructure teams who want reliable cloud hosting without the legal baggage of American hyperscalers. But they are not interchangeable. Each provider has distinct strengths, pricing models, and architectural philosophies that make them better suited for different workloads.

Hetzner Cloud: German Engineering, Unbeatable Pricing

Hetzner Cloud is headquartered in Gunzenhausen, Germany, and operates data centres in Nuremberg, Falkenstein, Helsinki, and Ashburn (US, for those who need it). For European workloads, the German and Finnish locations are the draw. Hetzner has been in the hosting business since 1997 and has built its reputation on raw value: their cloud instances cost a fraction of what AWS charges for comparable specifications. A general-purpose VM with 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM starts at around EUR 4 per month — a price point that makes AWS look extravagant.

What Hetzner does well is straightforward compute. If you need virtual machines, block storage, load balancers, and managed firewalls, Hetzner delivers all of this with a clean API and a no-frills console. Their dedicated server line is particularly popular, offering bare-metal machines at cloud-like convenience. For startups, agencies, and small to mid-sized businesses that need reliable infrastructure without a complex bill, Hetzner is hard to beat. Being hosted in Germany also means your data benefits from some of the strongest data protection enforcement in Europe.

Scaleway: The French Innovator

Scaleway, a subsidiary of the Iliad Group, is headquartered in France and operates data centres in Paris, Amsterdam, and Warsaw. Where Hetzner focuses on core compute at the lowest price, Scaleway takes a broader approach to the cloud portfolio. Their catalogue includes managed Kubernetes (Kapsule), serverless functions, managed databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis), object storage, and an expanding AI/ML platform with GPU instances.

Scaleway positions itself as the European answer to the full-service cloud, aiming to provide enough managed services that teams never need to reach for an American alternative. Their Cockpit observability platform, Transactional Email API, and IoT Hub reflect an ambition to cover the entire stack. Pricing is competitive, though generally slightly higher than Hetzner for equivalent compute resources. The trade-off is a richer set of managed services that can reduce operational overhead for teams that would otherwise need to self-manage databases and orchestration layers.

Head-to-Head: Where Each Excels

Pricing: Hetzner wins on pure compute cost. If your workload is primarily VMs and storage, the savings are significant at scale. Scaleway is competitive but not as aggressive on base pricing.

Managed services: Scaleway has a deeper catalogue. Managed Kubernetes, serverless containers, and managed databases are production-ready. Hetzner offers fewer managed services, which means more self-management but also fewer vendor lock-in concerns.

Network: Both providers offer generous bandwidth. Hetzner includes 20 TB of outbound traffic on most plans, which is remarkably generous compared to AWS’s egress pricing. Scaleway’s bandwidth pricing is also straightforward and free of the surprises common with hyperscalers.

Locations: Hetzner’s German and Finnish data centres serve Central and Northern Europe well. Scaleway’s Paris, Amsterdam, and Warsaw locations offer broader Western and Central European coverage.

Compliance: Both providers are fully GDPR-compliant and keep data within the EU. Neither is subject to the US CLOUD Act. For our full breakdown of GDPR-compliant cloud hosting, see our dedicated listing.

When to Choose Which

Choose Hetzner if your priority is cost-efficient compute, you have the engineering capacity to manage your own stack, and you value simplicity. Hetzner is the natural choice for bootstrapped startups, development environments, and workloads where every euro of infrastructure spend matters.

Choose Scaleway if you need a broader set of managed services, want to consolidate more of your stack with a single European provider, or have workloads that benefit from GPU instances and serverless functions. Scaleway suits mid-sized teams that want to move fast without hiring a dedicated DevOps team to manage every layer.

For a deeper look at how both providers compare directly to AWS, see our AWS vs Hetzner Cloud comparison and our AWS alternatives page. You can also explore all European cloud hosting providers in our directory, or browse providers by country to find infrastructure hosted in the Netherlands or other EU member states.

The European cloud is no longer a compromise. It is a competitive, privacy-respecting, and increasingly full-featured alternative to the American hyperscalers.