Cloud Cost Comparison: Scaleway vs Hyperscalers vs STACKIT

Sovereignty is not a sacrifice, when it saves you money. #lessismore any day of the week.

By Jurg van Vliet

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Cloud Cost Comparison: Scaleway vs Hyperscalers vs STACKIT

Current Infrastructure Profile

Based on the Clouds of Europe OpenTofu configuration:

Production Environment:

  • Mutualized (free) control plane
  • 2× PRO2-XXS nodes (2 vCPU, 8GB RAM each) across 2 availability zones
  • VPC with public gateway (VPC-GW-S)

Test Environment:

  • Mutualized (free) control plane
  • 1× DEV1-XL node (4 vCPU, 12GB RAM)
  • VPC with public gateway

Cost Comparison Summary

Component Scaleway AWS EKS Azure AKS GCP GKE STACKIT SKE
Control Plane (Production) Free $73/mo (~€67) $72/mo (~€66) $74/mo (~€68)¹ Free²
Control Plane (Test) Free $73/mo (~€67) Free (no SLA) Free¹ Free²
2× Nodes (2vCPU/8GB) €118/mo ~€180/mo³ ~€160/mo³ ~€150/mo³ ~€95/mo⁴
1× Node (4vCPU/12GB) €46/mo ~€90/mo³ ~€80/mo³ ~€75/mo³ ~€40/mo⁴
Data Egress (100GB) Included ~$9 ~$9 ~$12 Free
Load Balancer ~€10/mo ~$18/mo ~$18/mo ~$18/mo ~€15/mo

¹ GKE provides $74.40/mo free tier credit covering one cluster ² STACKIT control plane cost included in overall pricing ³ Comparable instance types (t3.medium, D2s_v3, e2-standard-2) ⁴ Estimated from STACKIT pricing model (~€0.018/hr for c1.1)

Monthly Cost Estimate (Both Environments)

Provider Production Test Total vs AWS
AWS EKS ~€320 ~€230 ~€550 —
Azure AKS ~€280 ~€145 ~€425 -23%
GCP GKE ~€270 ~€145 ~€415 -25%
STACKIT ~€180 ~€55 ~€235 -57%
Scaleway ~€130 ~€66 ~€195 -65%

Critical Analysis

Scaleway Advantages

  1. Free mutualized control plane — Unlike AWS ($73/mo per cluster regardless of size), Scaleway offers a free tier adequate for production. This alone saves ~€1,600/year across both environments.
  2. Inclusive egress — Scaleway includes data transfer in pricing. AWS/Azure charge $0.09/GB after 100GB free. For a community platform with moderate traffic, this could save €50-200/month at scale.
  3. Transparent pricing — Per-second billing with monthly caps. No surprise costs from inter-AZ traffic or API calls.
  4. European data residency — All data stays in EU (Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw). No US jurisdiction concerns.

Scaleway Disadvantages

  1. Limited service ecosystem — No equivalent to Lambda, DynamoDB, or 200+ AWS services. This is where the Kubernetes community comes in. Over time there will be more operator based distributions.
  2. Smaller community — Less Stack Overflow coverage, fewer tutorials, smaller talent pool familiar with the platform. This is mitigated by the introduction of capable AI for software engineering like Claude Code.
  3. Regional limitations — Only 3 European regions vs. AWS's 8+ European regions. This is just a matter of time. More regions, more cloud providers.

Hyperscaler Critique

AWS EKS:

  • Control plane fee applies to every cluster regardless of size (source)
  • Extended support adds $0.60/hr penalty for older K8s versions
  • Egress fees are a "lock-in mechanism" per multiple analyses

Azure AKS:

  • Free tier control plane but no SLA — Microsoft "aims for >99.5%" but provides no guarantees (source)
  • Premium tier ($0.60/hr) required for Long-Term Support
  • Hidden costs in Azure CNI networking

GCP GKE:

  • Free tier credit effectively covers one cluster
  • Autopilot mode adds ~20% overhead vs self-managed nodes
  • Egress pricing 20% higher than AWS for first TB (source)

STACKIT Assessment

Potential advantages:

  • German/Austrian data centers only — true EU data sovereignty
  • Backed by Schwarz Group (Lidl/Kaufland) — €7B+ annual revenue, serious investment
  • Free egress traffic currently (source)
  • Potentially 15-20% cheaper than Scaleway for compute

Concerns:

  • Maturity: Relatively new entrant (public since 2022)
  • Ecosystem lock-in: Proprietary tooling, less community support
  • Limited regions: Germany + Austria only
  • Documentation: Sparse compared to hyperscalers
  • Kubernetes version: Check if they support latest K8s releases

Data Sovereignty Reality Check

Provider HQ US Law Exposure True Sovereignty
Scaleway France None ✅ Yes
STACKIT Germany None ✅ Yes
AWS EU Sovereign USA CLOUD Act applies¹ ❌ Illusory
Azure/GCP EU USA CLOUD Act applies ❌ No

¹ Despite AWS's "European Sovereign Cloud" marketing, legal experts confirm US jurisdiction cannot be contractually waived. French MP Philippe Latombe: "AWS cloud cannot be sovereign because it is subject to the US FISA and Cloud Act" (source)

Sources