Scaleway — European cloud and AI infrastructure provider with transparent per-product pricing, VPS-class compute from about €0.43/month and bare metal from €4.99/month.
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Best for: European developers and startups needing transparent per-product cloud pricing and EU-hosted GPU instances for AI workloads
Pricing: No free tier; compute starts around €0.43/month, bare metal from €4.99/month, general-purpose instances from about €16.79/month.
- Scaleway's cheapest development instance (Stardust1-S) starts around €0.43/month.
- General-purpose instances start around €16.79/month; bare metal starts at €4.99/month.
- Scaleway offers GPU instances up to H100 and B300-SXM for AI workloads, hosted across 4 EU availability zones.
- G2 rates Scaleway 4.1/5 from roughly 20 reviews.
- Scaleway has no permanent free tier; evaluation typically runs through startup credit programs.
Limitations: No permanent free tier, only startup credit programs.; Some reviewers report billing disputes and slow support response times.; Small review sample size (around 20 on G2) makes the aggregate rating less statistically reliable.
Top alternatives: OVHcloud, Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Amazon Web Services, Vultr — full list
What is Scaleway?
Scaleway is a European alternative to the US hyperscalers, built around 4 EU availability zones and 65+ global points of presence, explicitly marketed on "simple, transparent pricing at the product level" rather than the enterprise-quote model larger clouds sometimes use. Its catalog spans standard cloud infrastructure (compute, Kubernetes via Kapsule/Kosmos, storage, managed databases) plus a GPU/AI stack (H100, L40S, L4, and B300-SXM instances) aimed at teams training or serving machine learning models within the EU. Compute pricing runs from Stardust1-S at roughly €0.43/month for the cheapest development instance up to general-purpose and compute/memory-optimized tiers priced per vCPU and RAM configuration; bare metal (Dedibox, Elastic Metal, and even Apple Mac mini rentals) starts at €4.99/month. Scaleway publishes per-product pricing pages rather than bundling everything into fixed plans, and supports infrastructure-as-code through Terraform and its own CLI/API. There's no permanent free tier — evaluation typically happens through Scaleway's startup credit programs rather than an ongoing free plan.
Scaleway is a French cloud provider offering 100+ infrastructure and AI services — virtual instances, GPU instances (up to H100/B300-SXM), managed Kubernetes, managed databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB), object/block/file storage, and serverless functions/containers — positioned on European data residency and published, per-product pricing rather than custom quotes. Entry-level compute starts near €0.43/month for a Stardust1-S instance (1 vCPU, 1GB RAM), general-purpose instances start around €16.79/month, and bare metal (including Dedibox and Apple Mac mini options) starts at €4.99/month. There is no permanent free tier; Scaleway instead runs credit-based programs for startups and specific workloads. G2 rates Scaleway 4.1/5 from roughly 20 reviews, with reviewers praising correct billing and easy management but some citing billing disputes and slow support as concerns.
Standout feature: Published per-product pricing (including for high-end H100 and B300-SXM GPU instances) rather than the quote-gated enterprise sales process common at larger AI infrastructure providers.
Biggest weakness: No permanent free tier — evaluation depends on startup credit programs rather than an ongoing free plan — and some G2 and Trustpilot reviewers report billing disputes and slow support response times, a recurring concern for a provider this size.
Pros
- Transparent, published per-product pricing instead of a custom-quote sales process for most services.
- Entry-level compute starts near €0.43/month, among the cheapest published cloud pricing available.
- GPU instances (up to H100 and B300-SXM) give EU-based AI teams a data-sovereign option for model training.
- Terraform and CLI/API support make it straightforward to manage as infrastructure-as-code.
Cons
- No permanent free tier; evaluation relies on startup credit programs rather than an ongoing free plan.
- Some reviewers report billing disputes and unexpected charges that require active monitoring.
- Support response times are cited as slow by some reviewers, occasionally described as weekly rather than same-day.
- Smaller review sample (around 20 on G2) than major competitors makes the aggregate rating less statistically reliable.
Scaleway pricing
Custom pricing
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Development instance (Stardust1-S) | Custom | Cheapest compute tier at roughly €0.43/month; 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM, priced in EUR. |
| General Purpose instance | Custom | Starting around €16.79/month for a 2 vCPU / 4GB RAM configuration (BASIC2-A2C-4G); scales up by vCPU and RAM. |
| Bare Metal | Custom | Dedibox and Elastic Metal dedicated servers (including Apple Mac mini rentals) starting at €4.99/month. |
What reviewers say
No third-party review scores on file yet.
