Alternatives to Google Cloud for Developers and Small Businesses

Hetzner is the best alternative to Google Cloud for most small teams. A German server with 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM costs about €5.49 a month with 20 TB of traffic included (Oct 2026). If your app runs on Firebase, Supabase is the closest replacement.

Updated October 16, 2026Prices, traffic allowances, exit rules and migration tools checked October 202610 min read

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Short Answer

Hetzner suits most small teams that can run their own servers. It costs about €5.49/month for 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM, with 20 TB of traffic at its EU locations (Oct 2026).
Scaleway and OVHcloud are French clouds with managed Kubernetes and databases. Scaleway charges no egress on instances, and OVHcloud includes outbound traffic outside Asia-Pacific.
Supabase replaces Firebase with Postgres and comes with official migration tools. It has a free tier, Pro starts at $25/month (Oct 2026), and you can pick an EU region.
Google waives exit egress if you move everything off a service, and the EU Data Act removes switching charges from January 12, 2027.
Plan a weekend for a small app and several weeks for a production system.

Many developers and small businesses use a handful of virtual machines, a database, a storage bucket and maybe Firebase, then pay Google for outbound traffic on top. The alternatives to Google Cloud below suit that kind of setup better. Most include the traffic Google charges for, and you can keep your data in Europe with a European company.

Leaving a cloud is a bigger job than leaving Gmail. Map what you use, rebuild it at the new provider, run both side by side, and switch DNS last.

Quick Comparison

Option	Best for	Starting price (Oct 2026)	Outbound traffic	Based in	Open source
Hetzner Cloud	Servers and containers you manage	About €5.49/month (2 vCPUs, 4 GB)	20 TB a month included in the EU	Germany	No
OVHcloud	Managed Kubernetes and databases	VPS from about €3.81/month; Public Cloud from about €5.71/month	Included outside Asia-Pacific	France	No
Scaleway	Managed and serverless services in the EU	About €6.55/month (DEV1-S, 2 vCPUs, 2 GB)	No egress fees on instances	France	No
AWS or Azure	The widest range of services	Pay as you go	Usually charged per GB; AWS waives it when you leave	US	No
Supabase	Replacing Firebase	Free tier; Pro from $25/month	5 GB free, 250 GB on Pro, then $0.09/GB	US and Singapore; hosted on AWS	Yes (Apache-2.0)
Appwrite	An open-source backend, cloud or self-hosted	Free tier; self-hosting free	Depends on plan or server	Self-host anywhere	Yes (BSD-3-Clause)
PocketBase	Small apps on one server	Free	Your server’s allowance	Self-host anywhere	Yes (MIT)

All prices exclude VAT.

Which One Fits Your Setup

A few virtual machines, Docker containers or a small Kubernetes cluster you run yourself. Use Hetzner.
Managed PostgreSQL, Kubernetes or serverless containers, kept in the EU. Use Scaleway or OVHcloud.
A web or mobile app built on Firebase. Use Supabase, or Appwrite if you want the option to self-host the whole stack later.
A side project or internal tool. Run PocketBase on a small Hetzner or OVHcloud server.
Heavy use of BigQuery, Spanner or Google’s AI services. There may be no like-for-like move. Keep those on Google Cloud for now and move everything else.

The Alternatives, One by One

Hetzner

Hetzner Online is a German hosting company. Its cloud sells virtual servers on shared or dedicated vCPUs, private networks, free firewalls, load balancers and S3-compatible object storage, with an API, a command-line tool and Terraform and Ansible integrations. Cloud data centers are in Falkenstein and Nuremberg in Germany, Helsinki in Finland, Hillsboro and Ashburn in the US, and Singapore.

Pick it because the prices and included traffic are low and easy to predict, and the console is simple.
Possible deal-breakers are the short list of managed services. Hetzner’s cloud page doesn’t list managed databases or managed Kubernetes, so you run those yourself. Prices also rose on June 15, 2026, and some dedicated-vCPU plans more than doubled, such as CCX13, from €15.99 to €42.99 a month.
Prices (Oct 2026) start at about €5.49/month for CX23 (2 vCPUs, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB) and €5.99 for the Arm-based CAX11, in Germany and Finland. A public IPv4 address adds €0.50/month, and IPv6 is free. Billing is hourly, capped at the monthly price.

OVHcloud

OVHcloud is a French provider. Its Public Cloud includes virtual machines, GPUs, managed Kubernetes, managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB and Valkey, and S3-compatible object storage. It also sells VPS plans and, separately, SecNumCloud-qualified services for organizations that need that French security label.

Pick it because it covers most of what a small team uses on Google Cloud, including managed databases and Kubernetes. Outbound traffic from instances is included in every region except Asia-Pacific, and Object Storage egress is free.
A possible deal-breaker is Asia-Pacific. Instances there pay for outbound traffic, and VPS plans in Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney have a monthly traffic quota. Advertised VPS prices may also assume a 12-month term, so check at checkout.
Prices (Oct 2026) start at about €3.81/month for VPS-1 (2 vCores, 4 GB) as advertised, and about €5.71/month for the smallest Public Cloud instance, d2-2 (2 GB).

Scaleway

Scaleway is a French cloud with four multi-zone regions in Europe. It offers instances, Kubernetes Kapsule, serverless functions, containers and jobs, managed databases, object and block storage, and bare-metal servers.

Pick it because its serverless containers and functions are the closest thing here to Cloud Run and Cloud Functions, and instance prices include egress and IPv6.
Possible deal-breakers are that storage and public IPv4 addresses are billed on top of the instance price, and that all its regions are in Europe.
Prices (Oct 2026) start at about €0.43/month for the tiny STARDUST1-S (1 vCPU, 1 GB) and about €6.55/month for DEV1-S (2 vCPUs, 2 GB) in Paris.

AWS and Azure, as a Reference

Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure match Google Cloud almost service for service, and they’re the obvious choice if a client requires them. They don’t take you out of US big tech, though. AWS waives data transfer charges for customers who move all their data off AWS, on request through AWS Support (announced March 2024).

Firebase Alternatives

Every Firebase project is also a Google Cloud project, so leaving Google Cloud usually means replacing Firebase too.

Supabase

Supabase is an open-source (Apache-2.0) platform built on a dedicated Postgres database, with sign-in for your users and other Firebase-style building blocks. You can use the hosted service or self-host it. Hosted projects run in AWS regions you pick, including Ireland, Paris, Frankfurt and Stockholm in the EU, plus London and Zurich.

Pick it because it’s the closest replacement for Firebase, with official tools to move Firestore collections into Postgres tables and Firebase users into Supabase Auth.
A possible deal-breaker is that Firestore documents don’t map one-to-one onto tables. Complex nested data is best split into related tables, which takes planning. The hosted service also runs on AWS, so even an EU region sits on a US cloud.
Prices (Oct 2026) start with a free plan for 2 active projects, a 500 MB database, 50,000 monthly active users and 5 GB of egress. Free projects pause after a week of inactivity. Pro starts at $25/month with 100,000 monthly active users, 8 GB of disk and 250 GB of egress.

Appwrite

Appwrite is an open-source (BSD-3-Clause) backend with authentication, databases, storage and functions, plus web hosting. You can run it on your own server with Docker or use Appwrite Cloud.

Pick it because you get Firebase-style building blocks and can later move the same software to your own server in Europe.
A possible deal-breaker is moving existing data, so check Appwrite’s migration documentation against your Firebase setup before you commit. On the free cloud plan, a project freezes when it hits a limit.
It starts at free (Oct 2026), in the cloud and self-hosted. Dedicated databases start at $10/month, and its pricing page has the current Pro price.

PocketBase

PocketBase is an open-source (MIT) backend in a single file. It’s written in Go, with an embedded SQLite database, user authentication, file storage, realtime subscriptions and an admin dashboard.

Pick it because one small server can run a complete backend for an app or internal tool.
A possible deal-breaker is that it’s still before version 1.0 (0.40 in October 2026), and its README says full backward compatibility isn’t guaranteed until then. It runs on a single server, so it suits small and medium apps.
It costs nothing. You pay only for the server.

Egress, Exit Fees and the EU Data Act

Google’s normal rate. Premium tier internet egress from Europe or North America costs $0.12 per GiB for the first TiB, after a free first GiB. Copying 1 TiB out costs about $120. Standard tier gives 200 GiB a month free, then $0.085 per GiB.
Google’s free exit program. If you move all workloads and data for a Google Cloud service to another provider or your own data center, submit Google’s Exit Notice form before you start. Google credits the transfer on your final invoice. You must end your agreement for that service, transfers must go over the internet, and partial moves don’t qualify.
Partial moves in Europe. Google points European customers who keep some services to a separate offer called Data Transfer Essentials. Customers with a billing address in the European Economic Area can also ask Google to erase their data without migrating it.
The EU Data Act. It has applied since September 12, 2025, and removes switching charges entirely, including data egress, from January 12, 2027. Until then, providers may still bill their costs for switching.

EU Sovereignty, Without the Marketing

Where data sits and which law applies are two different questions. A US company can store your data in Frankfurt and still be bound by US law. The CLOUD Act of 2018 requires US providers to disclose data in their possession, custody or control, whether it’s stored inside or outside the United States.

Hetzner, OVHcloud and Scaleway are European companies under EU law.
Check the layer underneath. Supabase’s hosted service runs on AWS. Self-hosting Supabase, Appwrite or PocketBase on a European server keeps the whole stack with European companies.
AWS, Azure and Google all sell EU regions. These change where data is stored, not which country’s law the parent company answers to.

How to Switch From Google Cloud

Difficulty Hard
Time A weekend for a small app, several weeks for production
Cost From about €5/month

Map What You Use

In the Google Cloud console, open your billing reports and group costs by service and by project for the last few months. That list is what you need to replace.
List every project, including Firebase projects and any project that holds an OAuth client for Sign in with Google, API keys or reCAPTCHA keys.
Write down your domains, DNS records and anything in your code that calls Google APIs.

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Google Cloud billing report grouped by service, showing which products cost money each month

File an Exit Notice If You’re Leaving a Service Completely

If you’ll move all workloads and data for a service, submit Google’s Exit Notice form before you copy anything. Google assigns a Billing Support contact within 14 days.
Start the move within the 30-day initiation period, and tell your support contact at least two working days before you begin. The migration period that follows lasts at least 30 days.

Prepare the New Provider

Create servers, databases and storage at the new provider, in an EU region if that matters to you. Use Terraform or Ansible if you can, so you can rebuild everything later.
Rebuild servers from your deployment scripts or container images rather than copying whole virtual machine disks.

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Hetzner Cloud console Create a server page with a German location and the CX23 plan selected

Move the Data

Cloud SQL. Open your instance, click Export, choose SQL, pick the database and a Cloud Storage bucket, and start the export. The SQL export leaves out triggers and stored procedures, so use pg_dump if you rely on them.
Cloud Storage. Copy each bucket to S3-compatible object storage at your new provider with a tool such as rclone, which works with both.
Firestore. Use Supabase’s firestore2json and json2supabase tools to move each collection into a Postgres table. Google’s own managed export needs the Blaze plan and counts one read per exported document.
Firebase Authentication. Save the password hash parameters from the Firebase console’s Authentication users page, then use Supabase’s firestoreusers2json and import_users tools.

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Cloud SQL instance Export dialog with SQL selected as the file format and a Cloud Storage bucket chosen as the destination

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Supabase new project form with an EU region such as Frankfurt selected

Switch Over and Shut Down

Run old and new side by side, and test the new setup with real traffic on a staging domain.
Lower your DNS records’ TTL a day ahead, then point them at the new servers.
Keep the Google project for a few weeks in case you need to roll back. If you used the exit program, file the completion notice.
Delete each project from the Manage resources page in the Google Cloud console. Google fully deletes it after 30 days, so you can still restore it until then.

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Google Cloud Manage resources page with a project selected and the Delete button highlighted

Before you delete a project, check that no live app still uses it for Sign in with Google, Maps or reCAPTCHA keys. Moving email and documents too? See our Google Workspace alternatives.

Our free scan reads files you download from Google and shows which other products and logins still depend on your account. Nothing is uploaded.

What You Lose

Partial is fine. Moving servers and storage to a European provider while keeping one small Google project for sign-in is a good result.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best alternative to Google Cloud?

Hetzner, for a small team that runs its own servers or containers. It’s cheap, simple and German, with generous included traffic. For managed databases, Kubernetes or serverless containers, look at Scaleway or OVHcloud. For a Firebase app, Supabase is the closest match.

Is there a European alternative to Google Cloud?

Yes. Hetzner is German, and OVHcloud and Scaleway are French. All three run data centers in Europe and are subject to EU law. OVHcloud also sells SecNumCloud-qualified services, a French government security label, for organizations that need it.

Does Google charge to move data out of Google Cloud?

Normally, yes. Premium tier internet egress costs $0.12 per GiB for the first TiB from Europe or North America (Oct 2026). If you’re moving all workloads and data for a service off Google Cloud, file an Exit Notice first and Google credits the transfer on your final invoice. From January 12, 2027, the EU Data Act removes switching charges, egress included.

What can replace Firebase?

Supabase for most apps. It’s open source, built on Postgres, and has official tools to move Firestore collections and Firebase users. Appwrite is an open-source backend you can use in the cloud or self-host, and PocketBase is a single-file backend for small projects.

Are AWS or Azure more private than Google Cloud?

Not in a way that changes much. They’re US companies too, so US law, including the 2018 CLOUD Act, can require them to hand over data they control even when it’s stored in Europe. Moving to them leaves Google but not US big tech.

Can I keep using Google Cloud for some things?

Yes. Move servers and storage first, and keep a small project for things like Sign in with Google, whose OAuth client lives in a Google Cloud project. Delete it last.