Hetzner Cloud vs Scaleway
Both are alternatives to AWS (EC2 compute). Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Scaleway vs Hetzner Cloud — same comparison, one verdict.
Hetzner Cloud
TOP PICKTwo to four times the hardware per dollar, 20 TB of traffic included.
The price-performance king of European cloud: ~€4.50/mo for 2 vCPU / 4 GB with 20 TB of included EU traffic — a spec competitors price at $24 or more, plus bandwidth. Transparent flat pricing, EU and US locations, and the provider half the self-hosting community quietly runs on. It pays Macrostack nothing, which tells you why it's the pick.
Scaleway
The EU-sovereign option — French cloud with ARM and bare-metal range.
For teams that want their infrastructure under EU jurisdiction on principle, Scaleway is the credible sovereign pick: instances billed by the hour, ARM options, object storage, and managed Kubernetes — all operated from France. English-language docs are thinner than the US providers'.
Side by side
| Hetzner Cloud | Scaleway | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 70 | 60 |
| Open source | No | No |
| Self-hostable | No | No |
| Local-first | No | No |
| License | Proprietary service | Proprietary service |
| Pricing | From ~€4.50/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB, 20 TB EU traffic); US locations slightly higher | Instances billed hourly from a few euros/mo; EU regions |
Hetzner Cloud is Macrostack's recommended AWS (EC2 compute) alternative, so it's our pick here.
Hetzner Cloud
Strengths
- +Two to four times the compute per dollar of US-priced rivals
- +20 TB of included traffic — bandwidth-heavy apps save $50–100/mo
- +Transparent flat pricing with EU data-protection jurisdiction
Trade-offs
- −Smaller region map (EU, US, Singapore)
- −Fewer managed services than the big platforms
- −New-account vetting can be strict
Scaleway
Strengths
- +EU jurisdiction and data sovereignty
- +ARM instances and bare-metal range
- +Hourly billing
Trade-offs
- −EU-centric region map
- −Documentation thinner in English
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-07-19. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.