Scaleway review

Scaleway is a European cloud and AI provider with more than 100 products and services, according to its homepage. It covers the main infrastructure layers: compute, storage, networking, containers, databases and GPU infrastructure. Its homepage emphasizes European regions, data sovereignty, open standards and transparent pricing—positioning for teams that want cloud infrastructure under European jurisdiction, though those claims do not by themselves settle the details of a specific service or contract.

The product range runs from virtual Instances for development and production workloads to bare-metal Dedibox and Elastic Metal servers, plus Apple Mac mini options. The platform also lists Multi-AZ VPC, load balancing, domains and DNS; Object Storage and Block Storage; managed databases; Managed Kubernetes and Serverless Containers. For AI workloads, Scaleway offers GPU infrastructure for single-node and multi-node LLM training. That makes it a broad infrastructure catalog rather than a single-purpose hosting product. The main switching question is whether its managed services match the specific AWS, Azure or Google Cloud components your stack depends on.

The clearest advantage is breadth within one European provider. A team can source virtual compute, bare metal, networking, object and block storage, managed databases, Kubernetes, serverless containers and GPU infrastructure from the same catalog. That can make Scaleway worth comparing when European regions and jurisdiction matter, or when you want alternatives to relying entirely on the largest US cloud platforms. The homepage also emphasizes open standards, a useful consideration for teams trying to keep infrastructure portable; it is not, on its own, a guarantee that migration between providers will be easy.

There is also a range of support options, with the listed response commitments becoming faster at higher tiers. According to the published pricing details, Basic is free and includes 24/7 ticket support with an 8-hour initial response time, but no phone hotline. Advanced starts at €50 per month, with a 2-hour initial response time and hotline access 7 days a week, 9 AM–6 PM CET. Business and Enterprise add phone support and dedicated technical resources, including a Technical Account Manager on Enterprise. A commenter in a Reddit discussion also cited Scaleway’s managed Kubernetes, GPU infrastructure, S3-compatible object storage and private networks as useful building blocks for a European data platform.

Pricing needs checking before you compare Scaleway with another cloud. The published pricing details list support-plan prices, but do not give prices for Instances, storage, networking or GPU workloads, so we cannot say what a typical deployment costs. Annual-billing prices are not published, and the listed free plan’s included services are not specified here. Paid support is not always just its stated minimum: Advanced costs the greater of €50 per month or 5% of monthly net cloud spend; Business, the greater of €250 or 10%; Enterprise, the greater of €990 or 20%. Those percentages can make the bill materially different from the headline price.

There are also user complaints worth weighing, not treating as settled facts. In one Reddit thread comparing Scaleway with Hetzner, a customer said they found Scaleway’s pricing hard to follow and listed backups, monitoring graphs, private networks and clearer pricing as gaps. Another thread includes a customer alleging a Dedibox was lost and no refund was offered; commenters disputed what happened and noted the importance of independent backups. These are individual reports, not proof of typical service quality, but they make it sensible to check backup responsibility, support terms and total costs before moving production workloads. The Basic plan’s 8-hour initial response time and lack of phone support may also be too limited for teams that need faster escalation.

The listed €50 starting price is for Advanced Support, not a published price for compute or storage. Scaleway says it has a free plan, but the material here does not specify what it includes. Basic Support is €0/month, with 24/7 ticket support and an 8-hour initial response time. It has no phone hotline.

Advanced costs at least €50/month and adds a 2-hour initial response time and hotline access 7 days a week, 9 AM–6 PM CET. Business jumps to at least €250/month for a 30-minute response and 24/7 phone support. Enterprise is at least €990/month, with a 15-minute response and a dedicated technical account manager.

Watch the support add-ons: Advanced, Business, and Enterprise cost the greater of their listed minimum or 5%, 10%, and 20% of monthly net cloud spend, respectively. Annual prices are not published. These figures don't establish what your underlying cloud workload will cost; check service-level pricing before comparing totals.

Plan the move around the services you actually use: Scaleway lists compute, storage, networking, databases, containers, and GPU infrastructure. Moving those workloads means mapping their dependencies and deciding what to recreate on the destination platform. The published material does not specify migration tooling, data-export procedures, egress charges, or backup behavior, so confirm those details before scheduling a cutover. Don’t assume your data can be moved for free or that provider backups will cover the transition.

The product overview doesn’t establish a specific lock-in mechanism, but managed services can require replacement work when you leave. Check how your Kubernetes, databases, object storage, and network configuration will translate before committing.

We can’t responsibly summarize why Reddit users leave: no Reddit posts or comments were included in the published material. Treat complaints as unverified until you review the actual threads, and ask Scaleway about export options, retention, and exit costs in writing.