Scaleway started in 2000 as Online.net, a French bare-metal hosting provider that quietly built one of Europe’s largest data center networks. The company rebranded in 2017 and repositioned itself as a full cloud platform targeting developers and startups who didn’t want to deal with AWS complexity or US data jurisdiction issues.
Headquartered in Paris, Scaleway operates data centers across France, the Netherlands, and Poland. Its pricing model is refreshingly straightforward — you pay by the hour for compute, storage, and networking without the labyrinthine pricing calculators that plague larger providers. The company was one of the first European clouds to offer ARM-based instances, betting early on energy-efficient computing.
Scaleway’s product lineup covers the essentials: virtual instances, Kubernetes clusters, managed databases, object storage, and serverless functions. Their Kapsule managed Kubernetes service has earned a solid reputation among European DevOps teams. The company also runs Scaleway Elements, a console that’s genuinely pleasant to navigate compared to the sprawling dashboards of hyperscalers.
What sets Scaleway apart is its commitment to sustainability. The company uses adiabatic cooling in its DC5 data center, reducing energy consumption significantly. They’ve also invested in their own submarine cable project. As a subsidiary of Iliad Group (one of France’s largest telecom operators), Scaleway has the financial backing to compete long-term while maintaining its focus on European data sovereignty and GDPR compliance.
