EU Cloud Providers vs. US Hyperscalers: A Realistic Comparison
The question is no longer whether European cloud providers can match hyperscalers on every dimension. It's whether the dimensions that matter most to your organisation favour a European choice.
Performance
Modern EU cloud providers like Hetzner, OVHcloud, and Scaleway offer excellent compute performance. For the vast majority of workloads (web applications, databases, containerised services) the performance gap is negligible. Where hyperscalers maintain an advantage is in specialised managed services, such as proprietary AI/ML platforms and global CDN edge networks.
Pricing
This is where EU providers often shine. Hetzner's dedicated servers offer exceptional price-performance ratios. OVHcloud's bandwidth inclusion model eliminates surprise egress charges. Scaleway's transparent pricing avoids the complexity tax that plagues hyperscaler billing.
Compliance & Sovereignty
Here, EU providers hold an unassailable advantage:
- Full EU jurisdiction: No exposure to foreign access laws
- Data residency guarantee: Physical and logical EU containment
- EUCS certification path: Alignment with emerging EU cloud standards
- Transparent ownership: No foreign parent company complications
Ecosystem Maturity
Hyperscalers offer broader managed service catalogues. However, the open-source ecosystem (Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible) means most infrastructure patterns are portable. The lock-in risk of hyperscaler-specific services often outweighs their convenience.
The Verdict
For organisations where compliance, sovereignty, and cost predictability matter (which increasingly describes most European businesses) EU cloud providers are not just viable alternatives. They're the superior choice.