AWS alternatives from Europe: the honest overview

Search for "European AWS alternative" in 2026 and you'll mostly find two kinds of articles: affiliate lists that find every provider brilliant, and provider blogs that coincidentally recommend their own service. Here's the third attempt: an assessment by people who move workloads between exactly these providers for a living — uncomfortable parts included.

Why switch at all?

• Legal sovereignty: US providers are subject to the US CLOUD Act — including for data on European servers. What that means in practice is explained here.
• Cost: European IaaS providers often deliver compute at a fraction of hyperscaler prices — and charge fairly for traffic instead of treating it as a profit centre.
• Dependency: Since the Microsoft/ICC incident in 2025, "what if someone pulls the plug on us?" has moved from conspiracy theory to board-level question.

The field: who is a real alternative?

The short answer: for classic infrastructure (VMs, Kubernetes, databases, object storage, load balancers) several European providers are fully production-ready. For highly specialised managed services (proprietary serverless platforms, exotic database services, deeply integrated ML pipelines) there are partial equivalents and honest gaps.

The six providers that most often end up in our reports:

• Hetzner (DE) — the best price-performance in Europe, probably worldwide. Few managed services: choosing Hetzner means running more yourself — or having it run for you.
• IONOS (DE) — the mid-market classic with BSI C5, German support and enterprise contracts. Costs more than Hetzner; buys you shorter compliance discussions.
• STACKIT (DE) — the Schwarz Group's cloud. Interesting for regulated industries and anyone who values "sovereign" over "cheap". Younger portfolio than the competition.
• OVHcloud (FR) — the broadest service portfolio under an EU flag, functionally closest to the hyperscalers. Good for international setups.
• Scaleway (FR) — the most modern developer experience, serverless and GPUs included. First choice for teams expecting AWS-style managed services.
• Exoscale (CH) — tidy, stable, Swiss data-protection tradition, data centres also in DE/AT. Popular with SaaS operators in the DACH region.

Detailed profiles with certifications and typical use cases live on our alternatives page — including the big service translation table from EC2 to Cognito.

The uncomfortable truths

1. There is no European AWS. If you expect a hyperscaler's full service palette 1:1, you won't find it. The right question isn't "who can do everything AWS can?" but "who can do what we actually use?" — and for most companies that's a surprisingly short list.

2. Fewer managed services means: someone has to do it. The price advantage of Hetzner & co. has a flip side: nobody runs your Patroni cluster, monitoring and backups for you. That's not a problem — but it is a plan you need to have (your team, a service provider, or managed operations).

3. EU providers raise prices too. Hetzner adjusted prices twice in 2026, significantly for some lines. The gap to the hyperscalers remains large — but a business case built on the single cheapest price is built shakily. Multi-provider capability is better insurance than provider loyalty.

4. Serverless is the final boss. A setup of fifty Lambda functions, Step Functions and EventBridge doesn't "just move" to Europe. It can be done — as a rebuild on containers and open standards — but it's the most expensive part of any migration. Still on AWS and planning to leave someday? Every new Lambda function is a loan against your future.

A decision helper in three questions

• "What's our constraint — money, compliance or team time?" Money → Hetzner. Compliance → IONOS/STACKIT. Team time → Scaleway/OVH (more managed) or a service partner.
• "How much proprietary service usage do we really have?" Under 20 % of the bill: migration is routine. Above: assessment first, decision second — possibly in stages.
• "Who runs it afterwards?" The most honest question of all. Without an answer, savings become operational risk.