Contents
- Scaleway Overview
- Pricing and Value
- Performance Characteristics
- Pros and Cons
- How It Compares
- FAQ
- Related Resources
- Sources
Scaleway Overview
Scaleway is a European cloud provider offering GPU compute alongside traditional cloud services. The company emphasizes data residency in the EU and transparent pricing. Scaleway operates data centers across France, the Netherlands, and Poland, making it particularly attractive for European customers with compliance requirements.
The platform targets both development teams and production workloads. Scaleway positions itself between commodity GPU clouds like Vast.AI and premium providers like Lambda. European focus differentiates Scaleway in a market dominated by US-based alternatives.
As of March 2026, Scaleway maintains steady market presence in the European GPU space. The company invests in infrastructure expansion while keeping pricing competitive.
Pricing and Value
Scaleway GPU instances are competitively priced for European infrastructure. H100 SXM costs approximately $3.80 per hour (EUR 3.50) in French data centers. A100 instances run roughly $2.70 per hour (EUR 2.50). These rates include EU data residency and undercut AWS on A100 by around 6% while offering GDPR compliance benefits.
Bandwidth costs represent Scaleway's competitive advantage. EU-resident traffic benefits from lower egress fees compared to US-based providers. Cross-border European transfers within the platform incur minimal charges.
Storage pricing remains transparent. Per-GB charges for persistent storage, local NVMe, and backup space are clearly published. No hidden costs or surprise charges appear in invoices.
Monthly commitments access 15-25% discounts across GPU instances. Annual prepayment provides even larger savings. For teams with stable workloads, commitment-based pricing reduces effective hourly rates significantly.
Performance Characteristics
Scaleway's European infrastructure delivers low latency within continental Europe. Average latencies to Frankfurt facilities hover around 15-25ms from most EU locations. This makes Scaleway suitable for real-time inference serving EU users.
Network bandwidth consistently hits advertised rates. Gigabit connections provide stable throughput without throttling during peak hours. GPU-to-GPU communication within racks shows excellent performance.
Storage I/O performance varies by instance type. Local NVMe delivers 500k+ IOPS for sequential workloads. Persistent block storage provides adequate throughput for most training scenarios but may bottleneck intensive I/O applications.
Compute performance is deterministic. An H100 from Scaleway completes standard benchmarks at identical speed to H100s from other providers. No performance degradation occurs from overselling or noisy neighbors.
Pros and Cons
Advantages
European compliance capabilities represent Scaleway's strongest differentiator. GDPR compliance is native to all services. Data residency in specific countries is guaranteed. Teams requiring French data sovereignty find Scaleway attractive.
Transparent pricing eliminates surprises. All rates are published with no hidden fees. Bandwidth costs are clearly itemized. Customers know exact charges before incurring them.
Excellent support for European customers. Support staff work in European time zones. French and German language support is available. Response times typically stay under 4 hours for serious issues.
Infrastructure quality is solid. Hardware is modern and well-maintained. Uptime reliability approaches 99.9% with consistent delivery on SLA promises.
Disadvantages
Limited global presence restricts options. Scaleway operates primarily in Europe. Asian and American teams face higher latencies. Global expansion remains incomplete.
GPU selection is smaller than competitors. While Scaleway offers H100s, A100s, and A10s, the breadth pales next to Lambda or RunPod. Niche hardware becomes unavailable.
APIs and documentation lag industry standards. Integration requires more development effort. Production features like reserved capacity appear underdeveloped.
Smaller community means fewer public examples and less community support. Integration guides and best practice documentation are sparse compared to larger platforms.
How It Compares
versus Vast.AI
Vast.AI offers cheaper pricing through marketplace dynamics. Scaleway emphasizes reliability and compliance. For production workloads requiring guaranteed availability, Scaleway wins. For development experiments, Vast.AI's cost advantage becomes compelling. See vastai-gpu-pricing for current Vast.AI rates.
versus Lambda Labs
Lambda provides superior global coverage and broader GPU selection. Scaleway counters with European compliance advantages and lower costs for EU-based customers. Teams already using Lambda pay the penalty for geographic mismatch. Check lambda-cloud-gpu-pricing for Lambda's full pricing.
versus Jarvislabs
Jarvislabs and Scaleway occupy similar market positions as mid-market providers. Jarvislabs emphasizes ease of use and quick onboarding. Scaleway emphasizes compliance and European residency. The choice depends on team location and regulatory requirements. See jarvislabs-gpu-pricing for Jarvislabs details.
FAQ
Is Scaleway suitable for production AI workloads? Yes, Scaleway provides production-grade reliability with 99.9% uptime SLAs. Infrastructure quality matches major cloud providers. European compliance capabilities make it particularly suitable for regulated industries.
Does Scaleway offer GDPR compliance guarantees? Scaleway provides explicit GDPR data processing agreements. All customer data remains in the EU. No data transfer to US locations occurs without explicit consent.
What's Scaleway's uptime track record? Scaleway maintains approximately 99.9% uptime across GPU infrastructure. Service level agreements provide compensation for downtime exceeding this threshold.
How do Scaleway's GPU prices compare to US providers? Scaleway A100 pricing ($2.70/hr) undercuts AWS A100 pricing significantly. H100 pricing ($3.80/hr) is cheaper than AWS p5 instances (~$6.88/GPU/hr on 8-GPU $55.04/hr cluster), while including GDPR compliance and EU data residency. For specialized GPU clouds like RunPod, prices are comparable. Bandwidth savings for EU-resident traffic add further value for data-intensive workloads.
Can I use Scaleway for fine-tuning large language models? Yes, Scaleway's GPU instances are fully compatible with popular fine-tuning frameworks. Performance is equivalent to other clouds. European data residency provides compliance benefits for regulated applications.