# Scaleway review

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.

By Noah — last updated & pricing verified September 15, 2026.

> **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.

## Facts

- Website: https://scaleway.com
- Pricing: Custom pricing
- License: Paid
- Platforms: web
- Best for: European developers and startups who need transparent, product-level cloud pricing and EU-hosted GPU instances for AI workloads, without a US hyperscaler's custom-quote enterprise sales process
- 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.
- Categories: [Cloud hosting and PaaS](https://findalternative.to/categories/app-hosting)

## Pricing snapshot

| 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. |

## Pros and cons

- Pro: Transparent, published per-product pricing instead of a custom-quote sales process for most services.
- Pro: Entry-level compute starts near €0.43/month, among the cheapest published cloud pricing available.
- Pro: GPU instances (up to H100 and B300-SXM) give EU-based AI teams a data-sovereign option for model training.
- Pro: Terraform and CLI/API support make it straightforward to manage as infrastructure-as-code.
- Con: No permanent free tier; evaluation relies on startup credit programs rather than an ongoing free plan.
- Con: Some reviewers report billing disputes and unexpected charges that require active monitoring.
- Con: Support response times are cited as slow by some reviewers, occasionally described as weekly rather than same-day.
- Con: Smaller review sample (around 20 on G2) than major competitors makes the aggregate rating less statistically reliable.

## AI summary

- 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.
- 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.
- Top alternatives: OVHcloud, Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Amazon Web Services, Vultr
- Limitation: No permanent free tier, only startup credit programs.
- Limitation: Some reviewers report billing disputes and slow support response times.
- Limitation: Small review sample size (around 20 on G2) makes the aggregate rating less statistically reliable.

## Alternatives

6 vetted alternatives to Scaleway: https://findalternative.to/scaleway — top picks: OVHcloud, Hetzner, DigitalOcean

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