Scaleway Review
Scaleway is the closest thing Europe has to a full-service AWS alternative, with bargain Dedibox bare metal underneath. Watch the itemized billing: the base instance price is not the whole bill.
Review last updated 2026-08-20 · How we rate hosts
Scorecard
Pros
- Full European cloud: instances, Kubernetes, serverless, object storage and GPUs
- Dedibox bare metal from about $5/mo is the cheapest real dedicated hardware anywhere
- Strong sustainability record, including the adiabatic DC5 data center
- EU sovereignty: French company, European data centers, GDPR-native
- Per-hour billing with no minimum commitment on instances
Cons
- IPv4 addresses, block storage and snapshots are all billed separately, which inflates the sticker price
- Support on free accounts is slow; good SLAs require paid support plans
- Console and API have historically been less stable than the US developer clouds
Scaleway plans & pricing
Promotional monthly rates as of August 20, 2026; most require the listed prepaid term and renew at the higher rate shown. Confirm on Scaleway's site before buying.
| Plan | Intro price | Renews at | Storage | Sites | Bandwidth | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DEV1-SVPS Hosting | $7.20/mo | $7.20/mo | 20 GB NVMe | unmetered egress | Approx USD, billed ~EUR 6.55/mo; block storage and IPv4 cost extra | |
| PLAY2-NANOVPS Hosting | $22/mo | $22/mo | 20 GB NVMe | unmetered egress | Approx USD, billed ~EUR 20.10/mo | |
| PRO2-XXSCloud Hosting | $45/mo | $45/mo | unmetered egress | Approx USD, billed ~EUR 40.95/mo; storage billed separately | ||
| Dedibox StartDedicated Servers | $5.30/mo | $5.30/mo | unmetered | Approx USD, from EUR 4.74/mo with 12-month commitment |
Our Scaleway review
Scaleway grew out of Online SAS, the hosting arm of French telecom group Iliad, and it is the most complete European cloud in this guide: virtual instances, managed Kubernetes, serverless functions, object storage, managed databases and a serious GPU fleet, all run from data centers in Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw.
Instance pricing is competitive but itemized. A DEV1-S with 2 vCPUs and 2GB RAM runs about EUR 6.55/mo (roughly $7.20), but a public IPv4 address, extra block storage and snapshots are separate line items. Comparing headline prices against DigitalOcean, where the droplet price includes storage and an IP, understates Scaleway by a few dollars a month.
The Dedibox line is the hidden gem. Scaleway inherited one of Europe's largest bare-metal fleets, and Dedibox Start servers begin around EUR 4.74/mo on a 12-month commitment: an entire physical machine with unmetered bandwidth for shared-hosting money. For hobbyists who want real hardware without a hyperscaler bill, nothing in the US market matches it.
Sustainability is more than marketing here. Scaleway's DC5 facility near Paris uses adiabatic cooling with no traditional air conditioning, the company publishes environmental impact data per product, and it has been one of the loudest European voices on data sovereignty. If GDPR posture or EU jurisdiction matters to your stack, that is a concrete advantage over US-headquartered rivals.
The weak points are support and polish. Free-tier support is ticket-based and can take days; meaningful response SLAs require a paid support plan. The console has improved enormously since the STARDUST era, but occasional API quirks and stock shortages on popular instance types still surface in community threads.
Scaleway makes sense for teams that want a real multi-product cloud in EU jurisdiction, and for anyone who wants dirt-cheap bare metal via Dedibox. Pure price hunters comparing single VPS specs will still find netcup and Hetzner slightly ahead.
Notable facts
- Part of the Iliad group, one of Europe's largest telecoms
- DC5 data center cools servers adiabatically, without conventional air conditioning
At a glance
| Founded | 1999 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Paris, France |
| Data centers | Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw |
| Hosting types | Cloud Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Servers |
| Starting price | $5.30/mo |
| Uptime SLA | 99.9% |
| Support | tickets, knowledge-base (24/7) |
| Free migration | No |
| Green hosting | Yes |
Frequently asked questions
Is Scaleway cheaper than AWS?
For comparable compute, usually yes, and egress is far cheaper since instance traffic is not metered per GB. But IPv4, storage and snapshots are billed separately, so compare full configurations rather than headline instance prices.
What is the difference between Scaleway Instances and Dedibox?
Instances are cloud VMs billed by the hour. Dedibox is the legacy bare-metal line: whole physical servers on monthly terms, with unmetered bandwidth and some of the lowest dedicated prices in the industry.
Bottom line
Scaleway is the closest thing Europe has to a full-service AWS alternative, with bargain Dedibox bare metal underneath. Watch the itemized billing: the base instance price is not the whole bill.
Check current Scaleway pricing →
