Hosting · Updated 10 November 2026 · 9 min read

European alternatives to DigitalOcean in 2026: App Platform and Droplets

Hetzner, OVHcloud, UpCloud, Exoscale and IONOS for virtual servers, Eurobase and Scaleway for apps: prices, locations and gaps, checked on each provider's page.

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DigitalOcean sells two different things, so the European answer comes in two halves. To replace a Droplet, a virtual server you manage, look at Hetzner Cloud, OVHcloud, UpCloud, Exoscale or IONOS. To replace App Platform, where you push code and the platform builds and runs it, look at Eurobase for a flat €10 or €20 a month, or Scaleway Serverless Containers if you already build container images.

For reference, a Basic Droplet starts at $4 a month for 1 vCPU and 512 MiB, and an App Platform container at $5 a month. DigitalOcean has European regions in Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt, but the company is DigitalOcean, LLC, with terms under Delaware law.

European options at a glance

Platform	Company	Replaces	Starts at	Billing
Eurobase	Warsaw, Poland	App Platform	Free, then €10 a month + VAT	Flat monthly plan
Hetzner	Gunzenhausen, Germany	Droplets	Listed from €5.49 a month, excl. VAT	Hourly, capped at the monthly price
Scaleway	France	App Platform, for container images	Free tier, then billed by use	By memory and vCPU seconds
OVHcloud	Roubaix, France	Droplets	VPS from €3.81 a month, excl. VAT	Monthly for VPS, hourly for Public Cloud
UpCloud	Finland	Droplets	Not stated	Hourly
Exoscale	Lausanne, Switzerland	Droplets	€0.00729 an hour for 512 MB, excl. tax	Per second
IONOS	Montabaur, Germany	Droplets	€2 a month for 3 months, then €5, incl. VAT	Monthly

Prices are from each provider's own page, checked on 9 and 10 November 2026.

What to check before you move

Which half you're replacing. A Droplet becomes another server you patch and back up. An App Platform app needs a service that builds from Git and runs the result for you, and few of the server hosts above offer one.
How the company is set up. A European region on a US provider isn't the same as a European provider. Read EU region vs EU company if a contract asks for one.
How the bill behaves. DigitalOcean and Hetzner bill by time with a monthly cap. Exoscale bills by the second. Eurobase charges a flat price and refuses work over a limit instead of billing more.
Where your database goes. App Platform offers a $7 development Postgres. OVHcloud, UpCloud and Exoscale sell managed PostgreSQL. Eurobase doesn't.
How your app is built. App Platform can build from a Dockerfile. Eurobase builds with buildpacks and doesn't use Dockerfiles.

1. Eurobase

Eurobase covers the App Platform half. You connect a repository on GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, Forgejo or Gitea, and each push deploys. Next.js, Astro, Nuxt and other frameworks run on V8 isolates. Servers in Node.js, Python, Go, Java, Ruby, PHP and .NET are built with buildpacks and run as containers that scale to zero without traffic. A coding agent can create and deploy projects through its MCP server and CLI.

Best for: web apps and APIs you'd put on App Platform, kept on European infrastructure at a price that doesn't grow per container.
Price: a Free plan, then Starter at €10 and Pro at €20 a month + VAT for the whole workspace. Starter includes 720 hours of container active time a month.
Company: a business registered in Warsaw, Poland. Scaleway, a French provider, runs the infrastructure.
What it lacks: Droplet-style servers with root access, Dockerfile builds, preview deployments and managed Postgres, MySQL or Redis. ISO 27001 and SOC 2 are in progress, not held.

2. Hetzner Cloud

Hetzner Online GmbH is a German host. Its cloud servers run in Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki in Europe, plus Singapore and two US sites. The Regular Performance CPX02 has 1 AMD vCPU, 1 GB of memory, a 20 GB NVMe disk and 20 TB of traffic in its European locations. The cloud page also offers one-click apps such as Coolify and Docker CE.

Best for: Droplet workloads where price per server matters most.
Price: CPX02 is listed at €5.49 a month in Helsinki and €6.49 in Falkenstein or Nuremberg, excl. VAT, billed hourly up to that cap. On 10 November 2026 that plan and the Cost-Optimized line showed as unavailable to order.
What it lacks: an App Platform equivalent.

3. Scaleway Serverless Containers

Scaleway is a French cloud provider. Serverless Containers run a container image you supply and scale from zero to 200 instances in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw or Milan. It's a close European fit for App Platform if you already have a working image.

Best for: teams with a Dockerfile who want to pay by use.
Price: 400,000 GB-s of memory and 200,000 vCPU-s free each month, then €0.20 per 100,000 GB-s and €1 per 100,000 vCPU-s.
What it lacks: the Git push workflow. You build the image and set up the deployment yourself.

4. OVHcloud

OVHcloud is a French group registered in Roubaix. Its VPS-1 has 2 vCores, 4 GB of memory, 40 GB of NVMe storage and unlimited traffic at 500 Mbps. Its Public Cloud adds hourly-billed instances, managed Kubernetes and managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB and Valkey, with European regions in Gravelines, Roubaix, Strasbourg, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, London and Warsaw.

Best for: a Droplet replacement with 4 GB of memory at a low entry price, next to a managed database from the same provider.
Price: VPS-1 from €3.81 a month, excl. VAT.
What it lacks: a Git-based app platform. Its Public Cloud page lists Serverless as coming soon.

5. UpCloud

UpCloud is a registered Finnish company. Cloud servers run in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Helsinki, London, Madrid, Stavanger, Stockholm and Warsaw, plus sites in the US, Singapore and Australia. Starter plans give a predictable monthly cost, Premium plans carry a 99.999% SLA, and servers are billed by the hour. It also sells managed Kubernetes and managed MySQL, PostgreSQL, Valkey and OpenSearch.

Best for: a wide choice of European cities, including the Nordics.
Price: billed by the hour; see UpCloud's pricing page.
What it lacks: a Git-based app platform in its product list.

6. Exoscale

Exoscale is run by Akenes SA in Lausanne, Switzerland, and is part of A1 Digital. Its zones are in Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna, Geneva, Zurich, Sofia and Zagreb, with Madrid listed as upcoming. Instances are billed by the second, and it also offers managed Kubernetes with a free Starter cluster and managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey and other databases.

Best for: Swiss or Austrian hosting, or per-second billing.
Price: the Micro instance, with 1 core and 512 MB, is €0.00729 an hour, excl. tax. Disk is billed separately per GB.
What it lacks: a bundled monthly price, since disk and instance are separate lines.

7. IONOS

IONOS SE is based in Montabaur, Germany. VPS S+ has 1 vCore, 2 GB of memory, 60 GB of NVMe storage and unlimited traffic at up to 1 Gbit/s. IONOS also sells Deploy Now, which builds static sites and PHP apps from GitHub, but its FAQ says it doesn't support Node.js server-side rendering.

Best for: a small server at a low entry price from a German company.
Price: €2 a month for the first 3 months, then €5 a month, incl. VAT. The €10 setup fee is shown struck through on the plan page.
What it lacks: an App Platform equivalent for Node.js apps.

How to choose

Running Droplets you manage yourself: Hetzner, OVHcloud or UpCloud, picked by city and the size you need.
Need Swiss hosting or per-second billing: Exoscale.
Running a web app on App Platform from Git: Eurobase, if buildpacks and no managed Postgres work for you.
Already shipping a container image: Scaleway Serverless Containers.
Using both halves: move the app to Eurobase and the database or worker servers to one of the server hosts.

How to move off DigitalOcean

List each component in the app spec: services, workers, jobs, static sites, databases and environment variables.
Deploy the app to the new platform on its default URL, then copy the variables.
Move the database with a dump and restore, and test the main user paths.
Shorten the DNS record's TTL a day ahead, then switch the domain to the new host.
Keep the DigitalOcean resources until traffic has moved.

Eurobase has a guide for this: DigitalOcean App Platform alternative in Europe. For the side-by-side detail, read Eurobase vs DigitalOcean.

Frequently asked questions

What is the European equivalent of a DigitalOcean Droplet?

A cloud server from Hetzner, OVHcloud, UpCloud, Exoscale or IONOS. All five are European companies with data centers in Europe. They differ mostly in price, billing step and city.

Is DigitalOcean a European company?

No. Its terms name DigitalOcean, LLC under Delaware law. It does have European regions in Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt, which places your servers in Europe without changing who runs them.

Is there a European App Platform that builds from a Dockerfile?

Eurobase doesn't use Dockerfiles, it builds with buildpacks. If your app depends on a Dockerfile, build the image yourself and run it on Scaleway Serverless Containers.

Which European host is cheapest for a small server?

OVHcloud's VPS-1 starts at €3.81 a month excl. VAT, and IONOS VPS S+ costs €2 a month for its first 3 months, then €5, incl. VAT. Hetzner lists its CPX02 from €5.49 a month excl. VAT. Compare memory too: these plans range from 1 GB to 4 GB.

Can I get managed Postgres in Europe instead of DigitalOcean's?

Yes. OVHcloud, UpCloud and Exoscale all list managed PostgreSQL. Eurobase doesn't offer managed Postgres, so you'd pair it with one of them.