Scaleway and OVHcloud are both French-rooted cloud providers, and both are frequent answers when a team wants European infrastructure and data residency. Beyond that shared origin they differ in scope and style. Scaleway positions itself around developer tooling, managed Kubernetes and AI offerings. OVHcloud spans a broad range from virtual private servers to dedicated hardware and public cloud.
On Buy Cloud Now the listings differ too: Scaleway has a single verified-account listing, while OVH lists a vCPU quota account and an Open 25 Port variant. This comparison covers both.
What each provider is
Scaleway operates multi-availability-zone regions across Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw and offers virtual Instances, Elastic Metal bare-metal servers, GPU machines, managed Kubernetes, object storage, managed databases and AI offerings such as Managed Inference. Its positioning emphasizes data sovereignty and renewable energy. The Buy Scaleway Account page lists one option, Scaleway ID Verified+Card Account, at $60.
OVHcloud operates data centers across Europe, North America and other regions. Its catalog runs from entry-level virtual machines to high-performance dedicated servers, public cloud instances and GPU-accelerated machines. The Buy OVH Account page lists OVH vCPU34 Account ($30) and OVH Open 25 Port Account ($350).
Key differences
- What the listing describes. The Scaleway listing name describes an account whose identity verification and payment card steps are complete. The OVH listing describes a compute quota of 34 vCPUs. One is about account status, the other about capacity.
- Geographic footprint. Scaleway’s regions are all in Europe. OVHcloud extends to North America and other regions.
- Product emphasis. Scaleway leads with developer tooling, Kubernetes and AI. OVHcloud leads with breadth and dedicated hardware.
- Price. The Scaleway listing is $60; the OVH vCPU34 Account is $30.
Account options compared
The table sets the three listings side by side. Scaleway ID Verified+Card Account ($60) is the only Scaleway option. Whoever operates it is responsible for keeping contact and billing details accurate and for following Scaleway’s terms of service, as with any account. The platform’s structure of Projects, Instances and private networks is described in Scaleway accounts: European residency and developer tooling.
OVH vCPU34 Account ($30) allows up to 34 virtual CPUs across all instances, which can be split into many small servers or a few large ones. OVH Open 25 Port Account ($350) is aimed at teams that run legitimate outbound mail under OVHcloud’s policies. The product families reachable from one OVH identity are covered in OVHcloud accounts: VPS, dedicated and public cloud.
Fit by use case
- Developers. Developers who want managed Kubernetes, object storage and modern tooling in Europe often gravitate to Scaleway. Developers who want a cheap virtual server quota to experiment with may prefer the OVH vCPU34 Account.
- Startups. Startups with strict European residency needs and container-based architectures fit Scaleway. Startups that expect to move from VPS to dedicated servers as they grow fit OVHcloud.
- Agencies. A 34-vCPU quota on OVH is enough to host several client workloads of varying size. Scaleway’s Projects help agencies separate clients within one account.
- Enterprise and residency. Both satisfy European residency when regions are chosen carefully. Scaleway keeps every region in Europe, while OVHcloud requires an explicit European region choice.
Considerations and limitations
Buy Cloud Now is not affiliated with Scaleway or OVHcloud. Verification status, quotas and enabled services are provider-side settings; confirm them inside the account, keep ownership and contact details current, and follow each provider’s terms of service.
Both providers leave operating system, backups and security to the account holder. Provider-specific answers are collected in the Cloud FAQ under Scaleway and OVH.
