Hetzner vs Scaleway for developers in 2026

Pick Hetzner when you want plain Linux servers at a low monthly price and you're comfortable running the database, backups and deployments yourself. Pick Scaleway when you'd rather rent managed pieces, such as Postgres, Kubernetes and pay-per-use containers, from one European provider. If you don't want to operate either one, an app platform like Eurobase builds and runs your code on European infrastructure run by Scaleway, a French provider.

Hetzner and Scaleway at a glance

Platform	Company	European locations	Entry point	Managed databases	Serverless
Hetzner	Hetzner Online GmbH, Gunzenhausen, Germany	Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki	Cloud server listed from €5.49 a month, excl. VAT	None listed on its cloud page	Not documented
Scaleway	Scaleway SAS, France	Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Milan	Free monthly allowance on Serverless Containers	PostgreSQL, MySQL, Serverless SQL and more	Containers, Functions, Jobs
Eurobase	Registered in Warsaw, Poland	European infrastructure run by Scaleway, a French provider	Free plan, then €10 a month + VAT	None, D1-compatible SQLite for Workers	Workers, Functions, containers that scale to zero

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

Questions that decide it

• Who runs the stack. Hetzner rents you servers, networks, load balancers and object storage. Everything above the operating system is your job. Scaleway adds managed services on top, so less of it is.
• How the bill moves. A Hetzner server is billed by the hour and never goes above its monthly cap, so the bill is easy to predict. Scaleway's serverless products bill by memory and CPU seconds, which is cheap when idle and grows with traffic.
• Where the database lives. Hetzner's cloud page lists no managed database, so you install and back up Postgres on a server. Scaleway sells managed PostgreSQL and MySQL with automatic backups.
• Locations. Both are European companies. Hetzner's European sites are in Germany and Finland, and it also runs cloud servers in the US and Singapore. Scaleway's regions are in France, the Netherlands, Poland and Italy.
• Bandwidth. Each Hetzner server in its EU locations comes with at least 20 TB of traffic. Weigh that against the egress you expect before you settle on a usage-billed product.

1. Hetzner

Hetzner Online GmbH, based in Gunzenhausen, Germany, owns data center parks at Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki and adds cloud locations in Hillsboro, Ashburn and Singapore. Its cloud comes in three lines: Cost-Optimized and Regular Performance on shared vCPUs, and General Purpose with dedicated vCPUs from €36.99 a month excl. VAT. Around the servers you get private networks, stateful firewalls at no extra cost, a REST API and CLI, and integrations for Terraform, Ansible and Kubernetes tooling.

One-click apps cover Docker CE, Coolify, GitLab CE, Grafana, Nextcloud and WordPress, among others. Coolify is the usual way developers get a Git-push workflow on a Hetzner box; managed Coolify alternatives explains what that costs you in upkeep. Load Balancers start at €7.49 a month excl. VAT for LB11, and S3-compatible Object Storage, offered in Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki, has a base price of €6.49 a month excl. VAT that covers 1 TB stored and 1 TB of egress.

Hetzner says its German and Finnish data center parks hold ISO/IEC 27001 certification, and its cloud page also mentions BSI C5, a 99.9% uptime SLA and 24/7 support by email.

• Best for: developers who can run Linux and want a lot of server for the money, or a self-hosted stack with Coolify or Docker.
• Price: the Regular Performance CPX02, with 1 vCPU, 1 GB of memory and 20 GB of disk, is listed at €5.49 a month excl. VAT in Helsinki and €6.49 in Falkenstein or Nuremberg, billed by the hour up to that cap. On 10 November 2026 those entry plans, and the whole Cost-Optimized line, showed as unavailable to order.
• What it lacks: its cloud page lists no managed database, no managed Kubernetes and no serverless product, so those run on servers you look after.

2. Scaleway

Scaleway is a French cloud provider with regions in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan. It covers most of what a developer reaches for on a hyperscaler: Instances for virtual machines, Kapsule for managed Kubernetes, Managed Database for PostgreSQL and MySQL with automatic backups, high availability and read replicas, and a Serverless SQL Database that scales to zero.

The serverless side is where it differs most from Hetzner. You push an image to Serverless Containers and it grows from zero up to 200 instances as requests arrive. Functions run Node.js, Python, Go, PHP and Rust and can fire on a cron schedule. Serverless Jobs run a container for longer batch work, and Queues speaks the AWS SQS protocol. Cockpit collects logs from Scaleway resources and keeps them for 7 days at no charge, and Transactional Email gives you 300 emails a month free.

• Best for: teams that want managed Postgres, Kubernetes or scale-to-zero containers without leaving a European provider.
• Price: Serverless Containers come with 400,000 GB-s of memory and 200,000 vCPU-s free each month. Past that, you pay €0.20 per 100,000 GB-s and €1 per 100,000 vCPU-s. Functions get 400,000 GB-s and 1 million requests a month at no cost. Instances and managed databases are priced on Scaleway's pricing pages.
• What it lacks: Serverless Containers start from an image, not from your repository, so the build step and the deploy pipeline stay with you.

3. Eurobase

Eurobase suits developers who like where Scaleway's infrastructure sits but don't want to assemble images and pipelines. It's a business registered in Warsaw, Poland, and it hosts apps on European infrastructure run by Scaleway, a French provider. Link a GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, Forgejo or Gitea repository and every push turns into a new deployment. Next.js, Astro, Nuxt and other supported frameworks land on V8 isolates. A server in Node.js, Python, Go, Java, Ruby, PHP or .NET is turned into a container by buildpacks and sleeps when nobody calls it. AI coding agents reach the same deploy flow through the MCP server and CLI.

• Best for: web apps and APIs that you want live from Git, without managing a server or a container pipeline.
• Price: Free to start, with Starter at €10 and Pro at €20 a month + VAT, each covering a whole workspace. Nothing is billed by usage today. Past a limit, new work is refused, apps on V8 isolates and Functions pause until the monthly reset, and containers and static sites stay online.
• What it lacks: server root access, builds from a Dockerfile, preview deployments, a managed Postgres, MySQL or Redis service, and KV stores or queues. ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certification is still in progress, not held. If your code lives on GitHub or GitLab, linking it makes GitHub and GitLab Inc. US subprocessors.

How to choose

1. You'll run the server yourself and want a low, fixed bill: Hetzner. Add Coolify if you want deploys from Git.
2. You need managed Postgres or Kubernetes in Europe: Scaleway, or OVHcloud and the others in European cloud providers.
3. Traffic is spiky and you already build container images: Scaleway Serverless Containers.
4. You want to push code and not touch infrastructure: Eurobase, as long as no managed database and no Dockerfile builds work for you.
5. You want both cheap compute and managed services: run workers or a database on Hetzner and the web app on a platform, keeping an eye on latency between the two locations.

Frequently asked questions

Is Hetzner cheaper than Scaleway?

For an always-on server, Hetzner's list prices are low: a shared CPX02 is listed at €5.49 a month excl. VAT, though the cheapest plans were unavailable to order on 10 November 2026. For a service that sits idle most of the day, Scaleway's free serverless allowance can cost less. Count the database and your own hours too, since Hetzner leaves those to you.

Does Hetzner have managed Kubernetes or a managed database?

Neither appears on Hetzner's cloud page. Its private networks are meant for running a Kubernetes cluster or a database yourself. Scaleway sells both as managed services, Kapsule and Managed Database.

Are Hetzner and Scaleway GDPR compliant?

Both are European companies, Hetzner in Germany and Scaleway in France, with data centers in Europe. Hetzner's cloud also reaches the US and Singapore, so pick Falkenstein, Nuremberg or Helsinki deliberately. Your own setup still decides compliance: sign each provider's DPA and go through the GDPR hosting checklist item by item.

Can I deploy from GitHub to Hetzner or Scaleway?

Not out of the box. On Hetzner you install a tool like Coolify on your server. On Scaleway you build an image in CI and deploy it to Serverless Containers. Eurobase deploys straight from GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, Forgejo or Gitea.

Which one is better for a side project?

If you enjoy running Linux, a small Hetzner server holds several side projects at a fixed price. If you'd rather not, Scaleway's monthly serverless allowance covers a quiet app, and Eurobase's Free plan costs nothing within its limits.

Sources

• Hetzner Cloud, Hetzner Regular Performance, Hetzner Cost-Optimized, Hetzner Load Balancer, Hetzner Object Storage and Hetzner legal notice
• Scaleway Instances, Scaleway Kapsule, Scaleway Serverless Containers and serverless pricing
• Scaleway Managed Database FAQ, Serverless SQL Database and managed database pricing
• Scaleway Functions limitations, Functions triggers, Serverless Jobs FAQ and Queues concepts
• Scaleway Cockpit pricing and Transactional Email FAQ
• Eurobase pricing, Eurobase plans, Workers docs, Containers docs, Agents docs and Eurobase subprocessors