Google Cloud vs Scaleway

What Google Cloud is

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) brings the infrastructure Google uses for its own services (Search, YouTube) to businesses worldwide. It is widely considered superior to AWS in AI, machine learning, and Big Data analytics. As the creator of Kubernetes, it leads in container-based management. With Firebase, it prioritizes developer experience while allowing you to query petabytes of data in seconds via BigQuery.

What Scaleway is

Scaleway is a proprietary European cloud with virtual and GPU instances, bare metal, object/block storage, networking, Kubernetes, databases and serverless services. Virtual instances are pay-as-you-go by powered-on time; the advertised compute rate excludes storage and attached public IPv4, while list prices include IPv6 and egress. Savings Plans trade commitment for discounts. On raw instances the customer owns operating-system updates, access, application security, availability and backup design; managed products move only specified responsibilities to Scaleway.

What Google Cloud is built to do

Google Kubernetes Engine

The world's most advanced management platform for containerized apps.

BigQuery

A serverless data warehouse that analyzes massive datasets with SQL speed.

Vertex AI

A unified platform for training and managing generative AI models.

Cloud Spanner

A globally consistent and scalable relational database for critical apps.

What Scaleway is built to do

Virtual instances

Offers development, general-purpose, memory, compute, GPU and other VM families.

Storage choices

Attaches local or block volumes and provides object, archive and snapshot services.

Managed cloud products

Includes Kubernetes, databases, registries and serverless services with product-specific boundaries.

Usage and commitments

Combines hourly use with optional Savings Plan discounts for committed consumption.

Choose Google Cloud if

• Data Scientists, Mobile Developers, and AI Companies.

Choose Scaleway if

• Development and production VMs whose instance family exists in the required availability zones
• European cloud strategies after legal, residency and disaster-recovery review
• Workloads benefiting from included VM egress and explicit hourly component pricing

Skip Scaleway if

• The architecture requires a service or global region footprint absent from the current catalog
• The team assumes storage, IPv4, snapshots and support are included in the compute price
• No owner exists for instance hardening, OS updates, backups and multi-zone recovery

Google Cloud: pros & cons

• Data Analytics Leader: Unrivaled processing power with tools like BigQuery.
• AI/ML Oriented: Deep integration with Google's advanced AI models (Gemini, Vertex AI).
• Firebase Ecosystem: The best backend solution for mobile app developers.
• Sustainability: The most eco-friendly cloud with carbon-neutral data centers.
• Market Share: Has a smaller enterprise support network compared to AWS and Azure.
• Naming: Google's service names and UI can occasionally be confusing to newcomers.
• Regional Support: Not all services are active in all regions simultaneously.

Scaleway: pros & cons

• Published component pricing: Instance families show hourly and approximate monthly compute rates by availability zone.
• Egress-inclusive VM pricing: Current list rates include outbound traffic and IPv6 for virtual instances.
• European footprint: Products run in named European regions and availability zones.
• Automation options: Console, APIs, CLI and infrastructure-as-code tooling support programmatic operations.
• Compute is not the full bill: Local/block storage, snapshots and attached public IPv4 are separate line items.
• Powered-on time bills: CPU instances accrue charges during startup and standby, not only active workload execution.
• Availability varies: Instance families, SLAs and products differ by region and availability zone.
• VM operations are customer-owned: OS patching, configuration, access control, backups and application resilience are not managed away.