OVHcloud vs Scaleway

At a Glance

Pick OVHcloud for breadth, bare metal, and a global footprint under EU governance; pick Scaleway when developer experience and modern serverless tooling matter more than catalogue size. Both are French, both keep data in the EU, and both undercut the American hyperscalers — but they have grown in opposite directions. OVHcloud built outward, manufacturing its own servers and pushing into 40+ data centres on four continents. Scaleway, a subsidiary of telecoms group Iliad, stayed focused on a clean platform that developers actually enjoy using. The right answer depends on which of those two priorities you weigh more heavily.

Pricing and Value

Both providers cost a fraction of AWS or Google Cloud, so the real question is how each structures its bills. OVHcloud leans on vertical integration. Because it builds its own servers and runs proprietary water-cooling, it undercuts the hyperscalers by roughly 50-70% on equivalent compute. VPS instances start around 4 EUR per month, a small OpenStack public cloud instance (2 vCPU, 8 GB) runs near 26 EUR, and dedicated servers begin around 70 EUR with unmetered bandwidth that would cost hundreds extra elsewhere.

Scaleway's pricing is built around transparency and per-second billing. A DEV1 development instance starts near 8 EUR per month, a GP1-S (4 vCPU, 16 GB) sits around 22 EUR, and Elastic Metal bare metal begins near 50 EUR. There are no surprise egress or bandwidth charges. Scaleway scores 8.0 on value; OVHcloud edges ahead at 8.5, helped by its bandwidth-inclusive dedicated servers.

Edge: OVHcloud for raw infrastructure economics and unmetered bandwidth.

Product Range and Services

This is where the two diverge most sharply. OVHcloud carries a deep catalogue: dedicated bare metal, OpenStack-based public cloud, VMware and Nutanix private cloud, managed Kubernetes, managed databases across MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and Redis, S3-compatible object storage, vRack private networking spanning data centres, and NVIDIA GPU clusters for AI training. It is reaching toward hyperscaler breadth without quite matching it, and our feature-depth score of 7.5 reflects that.

Scaleway covers the essentials and adds genuinely novel pieces rather than chasing parity. Alongside instances, Elastic Metal, object storage and managed databases, it offers serverless containers and functions, the Kosmos multi-cloud Kubernetes service, and Apple Silicon Mac mini instances for iOS and macOS builds — something OVHcloud does not provide. Its catalogue is narrower, rating 7.0 on depth, but several of its standout services have no OVHcloud equivalent.

Edge: OVHcloud for catalogue breadth and managed enterprise services.

Developer Experience and UX

Scaleway built its reputation here. The console is clean, the CLI is comprehensive, the API is well-designed, and the documentation is the kind developers actually want to read. Webhook support is built in, and integrations with Terraform, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Packer and Prometheus slot neatly into modern workflows. That polish earns it an ease-of-use score of 8.5, well above most infrastructure providers.

OVHcloud is more functional than pleasant. Its control panel works but feels dated next to AWS or GCP dashboards, and documentation quality varies across services. The OpenStack foundation does deliver standard APIs, Terraform support, and no proprietary lock-in, so infrastructure-as-code workflows are entirely viable. But the day-to-day experience is heavier, and OVHcloud's ease-of-use score of 6.0 sits firmly below Scaleway's. Support tells a similar story: Scaleway rates 6.5, OVHcloud 5.5.

Edge: Scaleway for console polish, API design, and onboarding speed.

Performance and Network

Both run their own infrastructure, so performance is solid on each — the difference is reach. OVHcloud operates more than 40 data centres across four continents and manufactures the hardware that fills them, giving it physical presence in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. The vRack backbone lets you stitch dedicated servers, public cloud instances and private cloud together on a private Layer 2 network, which is valuable for hybrid architectures that mix bare metal and elastic compute.

Scaleway's footprint is deliberately tight: Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw, with no global presence. For European workloads that is perfectly adequate and keeps latency low across the continent. As a subsidiary of Iliad, the group behind the Free telecom brand, Scaleway also benefits from real network infrastructure behind it. But if you need data centres in Asia-Pacific or the Americas, only OVHcloud can serve them natively.

Edge: OVHcloud for global reach and hybrid private networking.

EU Data Sovereignty and Compliance

Neither provider has any US parent or CLOUD Act exposure, and both score 9.0 on EU compliance — a genuine tie at the headline level. Each is a French company keeping customer data inside the EU, and both hold ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II and HDS health-data certifications. For most GDPR-bound organisations, either eliminates the cross-border transfer questions that follow US-headquartered clouds.

OVHcloud goes further on certified depth. It adds ISO 27017 and 27018, SOC 1, and — most significantly — SecNumCloud qualification from ANSSI, the French cybersecurity agency, which is required for certain government and regulated workloads. Scaleway holds the core certifications and participates in the Gaia-X sovereign cloud effort, with SecNumCloud qualification listed as in progress rather than achieved. For regulated public-sector work, that gap is decisive.

Edge: OVHcloud for SecNumCloud qualification and certified compliance breadth.

When to Choose OVHcloud

OVHcloud suits organisations that need European cloud infrastructure with global reach and the deepest compliance certifications. If your workloads demand data centres on more than one continent, VMware or Nutanix private cloud, managed databases across several engines, GPU clusters for AI training, or SecNumCloud-qualified hosting for government and regulated industries, OVHcloud is the only French provider that covers all of it at scale.

It also fits cost-conscious teams running compute-heavy or bandwidth-heavy workloads, where the unmetered dedicated servers transform infrastructure budgets. Choose OVHcloud when you want European-scale infrastructure with sovereign-grade compliance and can live with a dated console.

When to Choose Scaleway

Scaleway is the better fit for developer-led startups and scale-ups that want modern tooling without hyperscaler complexity. If a clean console, a well-designed API, transparent per-second billing and webhook support are part of how your team works, Scaleway's experience is hard to beat among European providers — and its 8.5 ease-of-use score is no accident.

It is also the natural pick for specific modern needs: serverless containers and functions, multi-cloud Kubernetes through Kosmos, and Apple Silicon instances for iOS and macOS CI/CD that OVHcloud does not offer. Choose Scaleway when you want a genuinely pleasant, modern European cloud and your workloads fit comfortably within its three EU regions.

The Verdict

OVHcloud and Scaleway prove the point that France can field more than one serious cloud — and the choice between them comes down to what you are optimising for.

OVHcloud wins on breadth, bare metal heritage, global footprint and certified compliance depth. For enterprises, regulated organisations and cost-conscious teams running heavy compute across multiple regions, its scale and SecNumCloud qualification make it the more complete platform. The trade-off is an ageing console and support that can be inconsistent.

Scaleway wins on developer experience, transparent pricing and modern services like serverless and Apple Silicon. For startups and engineering teams that value polish and live within Europe, it is the more enjoyable cloud to build on, even if the catalogue is narrower and the footprint smaller.

If you need scale, bare metal, global reach or sovereign-grade compliance, choose OVHcloud. If you want modern developer UX, serverless tooling and clean per-second pricing for European workloads, choose Scaleway. Both are proudly French, both keep your data in the EU, and both show that European clouds can compete without compromising on sovereignty.