Cirran's analysis reveals significant EU cloud cost advantages

This review examines Cirran's detailed cost comparison between major hyperscalers and European cloud providers. We evaluate its methodology and findings for developers seeking cost-effective infrastructure solutions.

TL;DR

Best for: Indie founders and small-to-medium businesses prioritizing cost efficiency, particularly those with significant data egress requirements or seeking alternatives to hyperscaler pricing models. Skip if: Your primary concern is global availability across a vast number of regions, or if your existing infrastructure is deeply integrated with proprietary hyperscaler services. Bottom line: Cirran's analysis strongly suggests that European cloud providers offer substantial cost savings, especially for compute and data transfer, making them a compelling choice for many common workloads.

METHODOLOGY

This v0 review draws on the founder's published claims at cirran.eu/blog/real-cost-eu-cloud, accessed on 2026-05-19. Independent benchmarks are pending. Update cadence: re-tested when claims diverge from observed behavior.

The review covers Cirran's detailed cost comparison between three major hyperscalers (AWS, GCP, Azure) and five European cloud providers (Hetzner, OVHcloud, Scaleway, Contabo, IONOS). The founder, mpuchala, conducted a direct price comparison across several common infrastructure components: small, medium, and large virtual machines, 1TB of SSD storage, 10TB of data egress, and a three-node managed Kubernetes cluster. Pricing was based on on-demand rates, specific instance types (e.g., t3.medium for AWS, e2-medium for GCP), and publicly available pricing pages as of the analysis date. The focus was on identifying the 'real cost' by including often-overlooked factors like data transfer out.

What's covered in this review: The founder's own claims, the specific cloud providers and workload configurations detailed in the blog post, and the resulting cost differentials. The technical detail in the linked blog post provides a transparent basis for the comparison.

What's NOT covered: Independent performance benchmarks of the various cloud providers, long-term workflow integration challenges, or edge cases related to specific compliance requirements or highly specialized services not included in the comparison. This review does not validate the exact pricing figures independently but evaluates the methodology and conclusions presented.

WHAT IT DOES

Cirran's blog post, "The real cost of EU cloud vs hyperscalers," serves as a detailed cost analysis tool, providing a direct, apples-to-apples comparison of cloud infrastructure expenses. It systematically breaks down costs for common developer needs, highlighting where EU providers offer significant savings.

Virtual machine pricing

The analysis compares the monthly cost of small (2vCPU/4GB RAM), medium (4vCPU/8GB RAM), and large (8vCPU/16GB RAM) virtual machines across all eight providers. It uses specific, comparable instance types where possible, such as AWS t3.medium, GCP e2-medium, and Azure B2ms. The findings consistently show EU providers, particularly Hetzner, offering VMs at a fraction of the hyperscaler cost. For example, a small VM on Hetzner is listed at $6.09, while AWS is $69.08.

Storage and bandwidth costs

Beyond compute, the analysis delves into the costs of 1TB of SSD storage and, crucially, 10TB of data egress. The blog post emphasizes data transfer as a hidden cost often overlooked. Here, the discrepancy is even more pronounced. Hetzner's 10TB egress is priced at $10.00, compared to AWS's $900.00 for the same volume, representing a 90x difference. Storage costs also show significant variations, with Hetzner's 1TB SSD at $45.00 versus AWS's $230.00.

Managed Kubernetes comparison

For containerized workloads, Cirran's analysis includes a three-node managed Kubernetes cluster. This section compares the base cost of the control plane and worker nodes. OVHcloud emerges as the most cost-effective option for managed Kubernetes among the analyzed providers, with a price of $14.99, significantly lower than AWS's $219.00.

WHAT'S INTERESTING / WHAT'S NOT

What's interesting about Cirran's analysis is its direct, transparent approach to cost comparison, explicitly calling out the often-opaque pricing structures of hyperscalers, particularly for data egress. The founder, mpuchala, doesn't just state a conclusion; they provide the specific instance types, storage configurations, and bandwidth volumes used for each comparison point. This level of detail allows readers to verify the claims against current pricing pages and adapt the methodology for their own specific needs. The magnitude of the cost differences—up to 90x for bandwidth and 11x for VMs—is a meaningful finding for any founder or business operating on tight margins. It challenges the default assumption that hyperscalers are always the best or only viable option, especially for workloads that don't require their full suite of advanced, proprietary services.

What's not as thoroughly explored, though acknowledged, are the non-price factors that influence cloud provider choice. While cost is paramount for many, aspects like the breadth of managed services, global region availability, ecosystem maturity (e.g., third-party integrations, community support), and specific compliance certifications (beyond general EU data residency) are not deeply benchmarked. The analysis focuses purely on direct infrastructure costs. For instance, while Hetzner is consistently the cheapest, its service portfolio is narrower than AWS or GCP. This analysis is a strong starting point for cost, but it doesn't provide a complete picture for complex enterprise migrations or highly specialized application architectures that might rely on specific hyperscaler features.

PRICING

The Cirran blog post itself is a free resource. The pricing discussed below refers to the cloud providers analyzed within the post, with figures accurate as of the analysis date (implied to be around May 2026 based on ingestion date).

Cloud Provider Pricing (as analyzed by Cirran):

• Hyperscalers (AWS, GCP, Azure): Generally the most expensive across all categories. For example, a small VM on AWS was $69.08/month, 10TB egress was $900.00/month, and a 3-node managed Kubernetes cluster on AWS was $219.00/month.
• EU Providers (Hetzner, OVHcloud, Scaleway, Contabo, IONOS): Consistently offered significantly lower costs.
  • Hetzner: Frequently the cheapest, with a small VM at $6.09/month, 10TB egress at $10.00/month, and 1TB SSD storage at $45.00/month.
  • OVHcloud: Competitive, especially for managed Kubernetes at $14.99/month for a 3-node cluster.
  • Scaleway, Contabo, IONOS: Also presented as substantially cheaper than hyperscalers, though often slightly higher than Hetzner or OVHcloud for specific services.

VERDICT

Cirran's analysis provides a compelling argument for considering European cloud providers, particularly for cost-sensitive projects. The data clearly shows that for common workloads—virtual machines, storage, and especially data egress—EU providers like Hetzner and OVHcloud offer prices that are orders of magnitude lower than AWS, GCP, or Azure. This makes them the best choice for indie founders, startups, and SMBs who need robust infrastructure without the hyperscaler premium, especially if their user base is primarily within Europe or if they have high data transfer volumes. Skip hyperscalers if you are optimizing purely for infrastructure cost and are not reliant on their extensive, proprietary managed service ecosystems. The bottom line is that the cost gap is substantial enough to warrant a serious re-evaluation of cloud provider choices for many organizations.

WHAT WE'D TEST NEXT

Our next steps would involve independently replicating Cirran's cost comparison using current pricing data and a broader set of instance types and storage configurations. We would also benchmark actual network performance and latency from various geographic locations to both EU providers and hyperscalers. Furthermore, we would investigate the ease of migration for common application stacks (e.g., a typical web app with a database and caching layer) to these EU providers. A v2 review would also include a qualitative assessment of developer experience, API maturity, and support responsiveness for the top-performing EU providers, as these factors also contribute to the total cost of ownership beyond raw infrastructure spend.

Pull quote: “Cirran's analysis strongly suggests that European cloud providers offer substantial cost savings, especially for compute and data transfer, making them a compelling choice for many common workloads.”