Scaleway Review
Scaleway is Europe's sovereign cloud and AI provider, a subsidiary of the iliad Group. Founded in 1999 as Online.net and rebranded to Scaleway, they offer a comprehensive portfolio of 100+ cloud and AI products with transparent pricing and zero egress fees — a rare combination in the cloud industry.
Starting at €0.43/mo
Pros
- ✅ No egress fees — true transparent pricing
- ✅ Six European datacenter regions (more coming)
- ✅ STARDUST1-S at €0.43/mo for dev and test workloads
- ✅ AMD EPYC processors across all instance families
- ✅ GPU instances available (NVIDIA H100, A100)
Cons
- ⚠️ No US or APAC datacenters — EU-only regions
- ⚠️ STARDUST1-S capped at 100 Mbps bandwidth
- ⚠️ Smaller community than DigitalOcean or Linode
- ⚠️ Support response times can vary on free tier
Scaleway VPS Plans
| Plan | vCPU | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | Price/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STARDUST1-S | 1 vCPU | 1 GB | 10 GB NVMe | 100 Mbps | €0.43 |
| DEV1-S | 2 vCPU | 2 GB | 20 GB NVMe | 200 Mbps | €6.55 |
| DEV1-M | 3 vCPU | 4 GB | 30 GB NVMe | 300 Mbps | €14.74 |
| DEV1-L | 4 vCPU | 8 GB | 40 GB NVMe | 400 Mbps | €31.27 |
| PLAY2-PICO | 1 vCPU | 2 GB | 20 GB NVMe | 100 Mbps | €10.42 |
Key Features
Zero Egress Fees
No data transfer charges — listed prices include all egress and IPv6 traffic.
100+ Cloud Products
VPS, bare metal, GPU, managed K8s, serverless, object storage, and quantum computing.
European Sovereign Cloud
Fully owned and operated in the EU. GDPR-compliant by design with data residency guarantees.
AMD EPYC Processors
All instances run on AMD EPYC CPUs. Dedicated vCPU options available on higher-tier plans.
In-Depth Analysis
Company Background & Reliability
Scaleway was founded in 1999 as Online.net, making it one of the longest-running European hosting companies. In 2021 it rebranded to Scaleway and pivoted toward a full-stack cloud and AI platform. As a subsidiary of the iliad Group (Euronext: ILD), it benefits from the financial stability of a publicly traded telecom group with annual revenue exceeding €3 billion. The company operates 4 multi-AZ cloud regions across Europe with 65+ PoPs worldwide, serving customers like Hugging Face, France TV, and Photoroom.
Pricing & Value
Scaleway's pricing is the closest thing to a "no-surprise" cloud bill in the industry. The STARDUST1-S at €0.43/mo is more of a novelty than a production plan, but the DEV1-S at €6.55/mo (2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 20 GB NVMe) is genuinely competitive. The absence of egress fees alone can save 20-40% compared to equivalent AWS Lightsail or DigitalOcean Droplets. Higher-tier plans (PRO, GP, STANDARD) offer dedicated AMD EPYC cores for CPU-bound workloads, while the compute-optimized and memory-optimized families cover production use cases up to 96 vCPU / 512 GB RAM.
If Scaleway's starting price still exceeds your budget, RackNerd VPS plans start at just $1.99/mo with multiple US and EU datacenter locations.
Performance & Ecosystem
All Virtual Instances use AMD EPYC (Milan/Genoa) processors with local NVMe storage for consistent I/O. The platform supports KVM virtualization with full root access on every tier — no managed-only lock-in. The ecosystem includes managed Kubernetes (Scaleway K8s), serverless Functions, Containers, object storage, block storage, and even quantum computing services. For developers who want a single European cloud provider for everything, Scaleway's breadth is unmatched by smaller VPS shops. However, the community and tutorial ecosystem is smaller than providers like RackNerd, so you may need to rely more on official docs.
What Could Be Better
The biggest limitation is geography: Scaleway is EU-only with no US or APAC regions. If your users are in North America or Asia, you'll want a CDN or a secondary provider in those regions. The STARDUST1-S's 100 Mbps cap is tight even for light web serving. Support on the free tier can be slow, though paid plans get priority. And while the product catalog is wide, some services feel like they're in permanent beta — check the changelog before depending on newer features.
For a simpler alternative with US and EU datacenters, RackNerd offers KVM VPS from $1.99/mo with 8+ global locations and weekly backups.
Our Verdict
Scaleway is an excellent choice for European developers and businesses that prioritize data sovereignty, cost predictability, and a wide cloud ecosystem. The no-egress pricing is genuinely refreshing, and the AMD EPYC instances deliver solid performance for the price. If your primary market is Europe and you value an all-in-one cloud platform over raw budget VPS pricing, Scaleway deserves strong consideration alongside RackNerd, Contabo, and the leading EU cloud provider.
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