Google Cloud alternatives: 10 cloud computing platforms compared
Teams look past Google Cloud when the invoice becomes hard to predict: network egress depends on tier and source region, and a catalogue of more than 100 priced products rewards people who already know which ones they need. The alternatives below range from flat-priced European hosts to the other two US hyperscalers.
Short answer: Hetzner, Scaleway and Exoscale head the list of Google Cloud alternatives drawn from our cloud computing platform ranking. Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Hetzner is the one to try if you want servers, volumes and a load balancer at one monthly price and no managed AI or analytics. Each of the 10 alternatives sits in Best Cloud Computing Platforms in 2026 and is described against Google Cloud.
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Pricing: Pay-as-you-go with a free usage tier and trial credit; two network service tiers
Established in: United States
Built for: Teams that want a documented exit route before committing to a hyperscaler
Not for: Teams wanting a single flat price for network traffic
01
Why buyers look past Google Cloud
01
Egress is priced by tier and by region
Google's Network Service Tiers page splits outbound traffic into Premium and Standard Tier, and prices Standard per GiB delivered according to the source region of the traffic. The Always Free usage limits apply to Premium Tier only. A team that serves downloads or video from several regions therefore has to read a regional price table before it can forecast a month.
02
The free offer is a trial plus moving limits
New customers get $300 in credit, and the free tier lists 20+ products with monthly limits, such as one e2-micro instance and 5 GB-months of Standard storage. Google's own page says the free usage limit does not expire but is subject to change. It is a good place to prototype, and a poor basis for a budget line.
03
The cheapest rates are reserved for commitments
Pay-as-you-go carries no lock-in, but the headline saving on Compute Engine, up to 57%, comes from committed use discounts that fix a spend or a configuration in advance. Beside a price list of 100+ products, small companies often ask for a provider where one server has one monthly price.
Free plan up to $200 over 6 months; 30+ services always free; Paid plan pay-as-you-go
Largest hyperscaler catalogue, 6-month free plan
you need the broadest service catalogue and the biggest partner base, and can live with a long price list
#12
03
What each one does differently
1
Hetzner
Germany · From €5.99 per month excluding VAT; hourly billing capped at the monthly price
Hetzner Online GmbH is headquartered in Germany and sells plain virtual servers: Cost-Optimized from €5.99, Regular Performance from €6.49 and dedicated-vCPU General Purpose from €43.49 a month, excluding VAT. Bills run hourly but never exceed the monthly price. Locations are Germany, Finland, Singapore and the USA, and the catalogue is far narrower than Google's.
Switch from Google Cloud if you want servers, volumes and a load balancer at one monthly price and no managed AI or analytics.
France · Hourly; PLAY2-PICO €0.01428 per hour; startup credit €1,000 to €36,000
Scaleway is a subsidiary of the iliad Group, running in France, Poland, Italy and the Netherlands, with 100+ cloud and AI products and four multi-AZ European regions. Instances bill by the hour with bandwidth stated in Mbps; a 1 vCPU, 2 GB PLAY2-PICO shows €0.01428 an hour. Startup programmes offer €1,000 to €36,000 in credit.
Switch from Google Cloud if you want a French provider with a broad product range and startup credit.
Switzerland · Per-second billing, same rate in all zones; support Starter 50, Pro 500 per month
Exoscale is a trademark of Akenes SA of Lausanne, founded in 2011 and a member of the A1 Telekom Austria Group. Resources are billed by the second at one flat rate across zones, which answers Google's regional egress tables. Support is priced separately: Built-In free, Starter 50 and Pro 500 a month. Object storage spans 8 European zones.
Switch from Google Cloud if you want per-second billing at the same rate in every zone, with a Swiss-Austrian owner.
France · US$200 first-project credit; hourly or monthly billing; Savings Plans up to 30% off
OVHcloud, a French company founded in 1999, runs over 46 datacentres on 4 continents. Its Public Cloud page offers hourly, monthly or long-term billing, says API calls and network traffic are included, and gives US$200 in free credit on a first project. Savings Plans take up to 30% off B3, C3 and R3 instances, managed Kubernetes and Rancher.
Switch from Google Cloud if outbound traffic charges are the problem and you can accept a French provider with 140-country reach.
Germany · Cubes from $0.008 per hour; first 2 TB outgoing free; 1-year and 3-year savings plans
IONOS Cloud sells Cubes, small virtual servers billed hourly: Basic XS (1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 60 GB) is quoted at $0.008 an hour or $5.76 per 30 days on the page read. Outgoing traffic is free up to 2 TB, then $0.036 per GB for the next 8 TB. One-year and three-year savings plans cover dedicated cores. Locations include Germany, the UK, France, Spain and the USA.
Switch from Google Cloud if you want Cubes with a published price per cube and a 2 TB outbound allowance.
United States · Basic Droplets from $4 per month with 500 GiB transfer; per-second billing
DigitalOcean, founded in 2012, aims at developers and small businesses. Since 1 January 2026 it bills per second with a 60-second minimum, and Bundled Plans stop at a flat monthly price. A Basic Droplet costs $4 with 500 GiB of outbound transfer, or $6 with 1,000 GiB. Its page does not guarantee a sign-up credit, only that promotions appear.
Switch from Google Cloud if a small team wants a Droplet at a flat monthly price with the transfer allowance printed next to it.
Not stated by the vendor · US$100 credit for new customers; hourly billing rounded up
Akamai Cloud (Linode) describes itself as a distributed public cloud built into Akamai's edge network, with managed Kubernetes in the catalogue. Billing is hourly, rounded up to the hour, and new customers are offered US$100 in credit. The pricing page quotes no plan prices and states no vendor country, so the cost must be checked in the plan list.
Switch from Google Cloud if you want a Linode-style cloud next to a content delivery network.
United States · US$300 for 30 days; Always Free services; first 10 TB outbound a month free
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers a US$300 credit valid 30 days and an Always Free list that includes AMD-based compute, Arm-based Ampere A1 compute, block volume, object storage and several Autonomous databases. Pay As You Go keeps the free amounts. The networking price list shows the first 10 TB of outbound transfer each month free in several source regions.
Switch from Google Cloud if you want free Arm compute and database services that do not expire, plus a large free outbound allowance.
United States · $200 credit within 30 days; 20+ services free for 12 months; 65+ always free
Azure's free account gives a $200 credit to use within 30 days, free monthly amounts of 20+ popular services for 12 months and 65+ always-free services. Anyone wanting the 12-month items must move to pay-as-you-go within 30 days. It is the closest hyperscaler to Google Cloud in scope, so it solves lock-in to Google, not complexity.
Switch from Google Cloud if your company already runs on Microsoft licences and identity and wants the same breadth as Google.
United States · Free plan up to $200 over 6 months; 30+ services always free; Paid plan pay-as-you-go
AWS has a Free plan with up to $200 in credits over 6 months ($100 at sign-up, the rest earned by using services) that closes when credits or six months run out. Over 90 services are available on it, and 30+ are always free within monthly limits. The Paid plan opens the full pay-as-you-go catalogue. It is the largest hyperscaler catalogue, not a simpler one.
Switch from Google Cloud if you need the broadest service catalogue and the biggest partner base, and can live with a long price list.
Google Cloud remains the right choice when BigQuery, Cloud Run or Google's AI interfaces are already central to the workload, since none of the smaller hosts above replicate them. Its pages show 43 regions and 130 zones, a global network that reaches 200+ countries and territories, and a free tier with a permanent e2-micro instance and 1 TB of BigQuery queries a month. A company with those dependencies will usually spend more on rewriting than it saves on the bill.
05
What moving off Google Cloud involves
01
Inventory what you actually call
List the Google services in use, the regions they run in and the monthly egress per region. A virtual machine and a bucket move to almost any host in this list. BigQuery tables, Pub/Sub topics and Cloud Run services need an equivalent chosen first, and some alternatives have none.
02
Run both bills side by side for one month
Run a copy of one workload on the target provider and compare the invoice with Google's after a month of real traffic. Take the full transfer into account, because the allowance and overage rules differ by provider and, at Google, by tier.
03
Move data last and keep the old project readable
Copy storage, then databases, then switch DNS. Leave the Google project in place on its free tier or a minimum plan until you have restored a backup from the new provider at least once.
06
Questions about replacing Google Cloud
6 answers
What is the best alternative to Google Cloud as a cloud computing platform?
For most teams that only need servers, storage and networking, our first pick is Hetzner, with Cost-Optimized servers from €5.99 a month excluding VAT and an hourly bill that never exceeds the monthly price.
Scaleway, Exoscale and OVHcloud follow in the list above; Scaleway lists a PLAY2-PICO at €0.01428 an hour.
Which Google Cloud alternative bills by the second?
Exoscale bills resources by the second at a flat rate across zones, and DigitalOcean has billed per second with a 60-second minimum since 1 January 2026. Akamai Cloud rounds up to the hour, and Hetzner bills hourly capped at a monthly price.
Is there a Google Cloud alternative with outbound traffic included?
OVHcloud says network traffic is included in its Public Cloud, DigitalOcean prints a transfer allowance per Droplet (500 GiB on the $4 plan), IONOS gives 2 TB outgoing free, and Oracle shows the first 10 TB a month free in several source regions.
Google prices egress per GiB by tier and region.
Which alternatives offer a free tier or credit like Google's $300?
Oracle offers US$300 for 30 days plus Always Free services, Azure $200 within 30 days, AWS up to $200 over 6 months, OVHcloud US$200 for a first project and Akamai US$100. Scaleway offers startup programmes with €1,000 to €36,000 in credit.
Which alternative is closest to Google Cloud in scope?
Azure and AWS, with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure third. All three publish a free tier and a full pay-as-you-go catalogue. They replace Google's vendor, not its complexity, so the smaller hosts are the choice for a simpler bill.
Can an alternative to Google Cloud run Kubernetes?
Akamai Cloud lists managed Kubernetes (LKE) and OVHcloud lists managed Kubernetes in its Savings Plan scope. IONOS Cloud offers managed Kubernetes alongside Cubes and S3-compatible object storage.
Google's own free tier includes one Autopilot or zonal GKE cluster, which has no direct equivalent among the flat-priced hosts.
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Sources
Checked 5 November 2026
Google Cloud free tier: $300 credit, 20+ free-tier products, e2-micro, 5 GB-months Standard storage, 1 TB BigQuery queries, GKE cluster, limits subject to change.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Written, edited and fact-checked by Sebastiaan Smits. Last reviewed 5 November 2026. How we review.
