Best European Cloud Hosting
EU-based infrastructure for teams with data residency or GDPR requirements.
GDPR and data residency requirements push a lot of teams toward EU-only infrastructure, and the good news is the European providers here aren't a compromise, several outperform their US counterparts on price. Hetzner is the default recommendation for a reason: German engineering, aggressive pricing, and a reputation earned over two decades rather than a recent rebrand. OVHcloud runs one of the broadest self-service catalogs in Europe with no egress fees, which adds up if you're moving a lot of data. Scaleway and UpCloud are smaller but sharper in specific niches, Scaleway for GPU and Kubernetes workloads, UpCloud for raw storage performance. IONOS rounds out the list as the budget-friendliest option, especially for Windows workloads that need to stay in the EU.
OVHcloud
European cloud giant with transparent per-hour billing, no egress fees, and one of the industry's broadest self-service catalogs.
Best for: European data residency, Cost-conscious scale-outs, Managed databases, Kubernetes, AI/GPU workloads
Starts at $0.01/mo · S3-compatible
Scaleway
European cloud provider offering VMs, Kubernetes, GPUs, and managed services with transparent per-second billing.
Best for: European data residency / GDPR-sensitive workloads, Startups and SMBs, GPU/AI workloads, Kubernetes
Starts at $0.01/mo · Per GB per month equivalent, single availability zone, Paris region
IONOS
German-engineered cloud and hosting with granular pay-as-you-go pricing and aggressive intro rates.
Best for: Budget shared/VPS hosting, Windows workloads, EU-based data residency, Granular building-block cloud pricing
Starts at $0.02/mo · Priced per GB per 30 days, optional add-on
Hetzner
German engineering-grade cloud and dedicated servers at some of the industry's lowest prices.
Best for: Budget-conscious developers, EU-based workloads, Self-hosters, High-performance dedicated servers
Starts at $0.6/mo · 10 GB SSD
UpCloud
Finnish infrastructure cloud known for MaxIOPS block storage performance and simple, transparent per-hour pricing.
Best for: Performance-sensitive VPS workloads, European data residency, Simple predictable billing
Starts at $3.5/mo · 1 GB RAM, 1 vCPU, 10 GB Standard SSD