# Exoscale vs UpCloud in 2026

Last updated: 2026-11-10

Both are European infrastructure clouds that sell virtual machines, managed Kubernetes, managed databases and object storage, so the choice mostly comes down to geography and paperwork. **Exoscale** suits teams that need zones in Switzerland, Germany, Austria or South-East Europe and a published ISO 27001 certificate and BSI C5 attestation. **UpCloud** suits teams that want Nordic, Dutch, British, Spanish or Polish locations and outbound traffic at no extra charge within a fair transfer quota. If you'd rather not run servers or clusters at all, **Eurobase** deploys web apps from Git on European infrastructure run by Scaleway, a French provider.

## Exoscale and UpCloud at a glance

| Platform | Company | European locations | Billing | Managed databases | Managed Kubernetes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exoscale | Akenes SA, Lausanne, Switzerland, member of A1 Digital | Frankfurt, Munich, two in Vienna, Geneva, Zurich, Sofia, Zagreb; Madrid upcoming | By the second, prices excl. tax, in EUR, CHF or USD | PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, OpenSearch, Kafka, ClickHouse | SKS, free Starter control plane |
| UpCloud | Registered Finnish company | Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, two in Helsinki, London, Madrid, Stavanger, Stockholm, Warsaw | By the hour, with a capped monthly price per plan; see its pricing page | MySQL, PostgreSQL, Valkey, OpenSearch | Free Development control plane, Production billed hourly |
| Eurobase | Warsaw, Poland | European infrastructure run by Scaleway | Free plan, then €10 a month + VAT | SQLite for apps on V8 isolates only | Not applicable, it's an app platform |

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

## What to weigh before you pick one

- **Where your users and regulators are.** Exoscale's map leans Central and South-East Europe, with two Swiss zones. UpCloud's leans North and West, with five Nordic zones and none in Switzerland or Austria. Put the servers near the people who use them.
- **Switzerland versus the EU.** Exoscale is run by Akenes SA, a Swiss company, while its zones span EU and Swiss soil. UpCloud is a Finnish company, so it's inside the EU. If a contract names the EU, read [EU region vs EU company](/i/eu-region-vs-eu-company-cloud-act) before deciding which one counts.
- **Traffic costs.** UpCloud doesn't charge for public outbound transfer under its zero-cost egress initiative, within each plan's fair transfer quota; only its retired Flexible plans pay per GB. If your app serves a lot of files or video, that line can outweigh a small gap in server prices.
- **Audits you have to show.** Exoscale states an ISO 27001 certified ISMS and a BSI C5:2020 Type 2 attestation. UpCloud keeps its certifications on a separate compliance and security page, so check that list against what your buyers ask for.
- **Locations outside Europe.** UpCloud also runs Chicago, New York, San Jose, Singapore and Sydney. Exoscale lists only European zones.

## 1. Exoscale

Exoscale is a trademark of Akenes SA, a private Swiss company founded in 2011, with its address in Lausanne. It belongs to A1 Digital, part of the A1 Telekom Austria Group listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange. Its zones are DE-FRA-1 in Frankfurt and CH-GVA-2 in Geneva, both in Equinix facilities, plus Munich, two sites in Vienna, Zurich, Sofia and Zagreb, with ES-MAD-1 near Madrid listed as upcoming.

The catalogue covers compute instances, GPU servers, block and S3-compatible object storage, private networks, DNS, a CDN, key management and IAM. Its managed Kubernetes, SKS, has two plans: Starter with a control plane at €0 an hour, and Pro with a highly available control plane and a 99.95% SLA at €0.054995 an hour. The DBaaS range goes past relational databases to Valkey, OpenSearch, Kafka, ClickHouse, Grafana and pgvector, with automated backups and a 99.99% uptime SLA on managed databases.

- **Best for:** teams in the DACH region or South-East Europe, companies that want Swiss zones, and buyers who ask for ISO 27001 or BSI C5.
- **Price:** everything is billed by the second at the same rate in every zone. The smallest standard instance, Micro with 512 MB and 1 core, costs €0.00729 an hour excl. tax, and local disk adds €0.00014 per GiB an hour with a 10 GB minimum. That works out at about €6.34 for a full 730-hour month. The 2 GB Small instance is €0.02333 an hour, and PostgreSQL starts with Hobbyist plans from €0.05346 an hour.
- **What it lacks:** locations in the Nordics, the Netherlands, the UK or Poland. GPU instances need a manual account check first.

## 2. UpCloud

UpCloud is a registered Finnish company. In Europe it runs nl-ams1 in Amsterdam, dk-cph1 in Copenhagen, de-fra1 in Frankfurt, fi-hel1 and fi-hel2 in Helsinki, uk-lon1 in London, es-mad1 in Madrid, no-svg1 in Stavanger, se-sto1 in Stockholm and pl-waw1 in Warsaw. Its products include cloud servers, GPU servers, private cloud, block, file and object storage, load balancers, NAT and VPN gateways, managed Kubernetes and managed MySQL, PostgreSQL, Valkey and OpenSearch. A container registry entered open beta on 9 November 2026.

Cloud servers come in three families. Starter plans are the low-cost choice for small projects and testing. Premium plans add MaxIOPS storage and a 99.999% SLA. Cloud Native plans sell CPU, memory and traffic alone, with storage and IPs on top, and suit Kubernetes worker nodes. Each plan has a capped monthly price but is billed by the hour, and each includes a fair transfer quota, from 0.5 TB on the smallest. IPv6 addresses cost nothing. For Kubernetes, the Development control plane is free for up to 30 nodes without high availability, and the Production one is billed per hour for up to 120 nodes with high availability.

- **Best for:** teams serving the Nordics, the Benelux, the UK, Spain or Poland, and apps with heavy outbound traffic.
- **Price:** cloud servers are billed by the hour; plan prices are on [UpCloud's pricing page](https://upcloud.com/pricing/). The free trial asks for billing details and a credit card to verify your account.
- **What it lacks:** zones in Switzerland, Austria or South-East Europe, and managed Kafka or ClickHouse.

## 3. Eurobase

Eurobase isn't an infrastructure cloud, so it doesn't replace a VM, a Kubernetes cluster or a managed database from either provider. It's the option for a web app or API you'd otherwise put on a small Exoscale or UpCloud server and then maintain. You connect a repository on GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, Forgejo or Gitea. Next.js, Astro, Nuxt and similar frameworks run on [V8 isolates](/docs/workers), and Node.js, Python, Go, Java, Ruby, PHP and .NET servers run as [containers](/docs/containers) built with buildpacks. Coding agents can deploy through its [MCP server and CLI](/docs/agents).

- **Best for:** developers who want a site or API live from Git without patching a server or writing Kubernetes manifests.
- **Price:** a Free plan, then €10 or €20 a month + VAT for the whole workspace. Nothing is billed by usage today: once a limit is reached, further work is refused, apps on V8 isolates and Functions stop until the monthly reset, and containers and static sites keep serving.
- **What it lacks:** servers with root access, Dockerfile builds, preview deployments, managed Postgres, MySQL or Redis, and a choice of location. ISO 27001 and SOC 2 are in progress, not yet held. Connecting GitHub or GitLab adds GitHub and GitLab Inc. as US subprocessors.

## How to choose

1. **Your users or data must be in Switzerland or Austria:** Exoscale. See [hosting in Switzerland](/i/hosting-in-switzerland) for Swiss-only options too.
2. **Your users are in the Nordics, Benelux, UK, Spain or Poland:** UpCloud, which has a zone in each. [Hosting in Finland](/i/hosting-in-finland) covers the Helsinki choices.
3. **A buyer wants an ISO 27001 certificate or a BSI C5 report on day one:** Exoscale publishes both; compare UpCloud's own compliance page before ruling it out.
4. **You expect large outbound traffic:** UpCloud's zero-cost egress, within each plan's fair transfer quota, makes the bill easier to forecast.
5. **You need Kafka or ClickHouse managed for you:** Exoscale lists both.
6. **You'd rather not run servers or clusters:** Eurobase for the web app, with a database from one of these two or from the list in [managed Postgres in Europe](/i/managed-postgres-europe).

## Frequently asked questions

### Is Exoscale or UpCloud cheaper?

It depends on the shape of your app. Exoscale's Micro instance is €0.00729 an hour excl. tax, about €6.34 a month with its minimum 10 GB disk, billed by the second. UpCloud bills servers by the hour and lists its plan prices on its own pricing page, so compare the size you'd actually run. Add traffic too: UpCloud doesn't charge for public outbound transfer on its current plans, within each plan's fair transfer quota.

### Is Exoscale an EU company?

Exoscale is run by Akenes SA, a Swiss company in Lausanne, and is part of the Austrian A1 group. Switzerland isn't in the EU, though most of Exoscale's zones are in EU countries: Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Croatia. UpCloud is a Finnish company, so it sits inside the EU.

### Do both offer managed Kubernetes with a free control plane?

Yes. Exoscale SKS has a Starter plan with a control plane at €0, and UpCloud's Development plan is free for clusters up to 30 nodes. Both charge for a highly available control plane: Exoscale's Pro plan and UpCloud's Production plan. You still pay for the worker nodes as normal instances on both.

### Does UpCloud have a data centre in Germany or Poland?

Yes. UpCloud runs de-fra1 in Frankfurt and pl-waw1 in Warsaw. Exoscale has Frankfurt and Munich in Germany but no Polish zone.

### Can I deploy from GitHub to Exoscale or UpCloud?

Not directly. Both sell infrastructure rather than a Git deploy service, so you build an image or set up a CI pipeline, then run it on a server or a Kubernetes cluster yourself. For platforms that build from Git, Eurobase among them, see [European PaaS options](/i/best-european-paas) and [European cloud providers](/i/european-cloud-providers).

## Sources

- [Exoscale pricing](https://www.exoscale.com/pricing/), [Exoscale data centers](https://www.exoscale.com/datacenters/) and [About Exoscale](https://www.exoscale.com/about/)
- [Exoscale SKS](https://www.exoscale.com/sks/), [Exoscale DBaaS](https://www.exoscale.com/dbaas/), [Exoscale compliance](https://www.exoscale.com/compliance/) and [Exoscale BSI C5](https://www.exoscale.com/compliance/bsi-c5/)
- [UpCloud documentation](https://upcloud.com/docs/), [UpCloud locations](https://upcloud.com/docs/getting-started/locations/), [UpCloud billing](https://upcloud.com/docs/getting-started/billing/) and [UpCloud pricing](https://upcloud.com/pricing/)
- [UpCloud server plans](https://upcloud.com/docs/products/cloud-servers/plans/), [UpCloud networking billing](https://upcloud.com/docs/products/networking/billing/), [UpCloud Managed Kubernetes](https://upcloud.com/docs/products/managed-kubernetes/) and [Managed Kubernetes billing](https://upcloud.com/docs/products/managed-kubernetes/billing/)
- [Eurobase pricing](/pricing), [Eurobase plans](/docs/plans), [Workers docs](/docs/workers), [Containers docs](/docs/containers), [Agents docs](/docs/agents) and [Eurobase subprocessors](/legal/subprocessors)