What is the best cloud provider for startups?
Credits cover year one. The right cloud is the one you can still afford in year two.
Every big cloud hands startups credits. Few founders check what the same server costs once those credits are gone, or what moving data out will cost them. That is how a $0 invoice turns into a four-figure one in month 13.
The short answer: OVHcloud is our first pick, with €10,000 in credits on its Start tier and a 2 vCPU machine at $14.18 a month afterward, egress included. Hetzner gives no credits but stays the cheapest to run. Google Cloud has the biggest checks for a funded AI startup, up to $350,000, plus a $2,000 Start tier that needs no raise. AWS pays off if a partner fund opens its $200,000 Portfolio tier; on your own it starts at $1,000.
We compared the startup programs as written on official pages, the hourly price of a comparable 2 vCPU VM after credits, and egress fees, side by side.
Rankings are editorial: a sponsored spot is always labeled on its card, and no affiliate link changes a score.
The best cloud for startups by stage
€10,000 in credits, egress included
No credits, tiny billCPX22 at €19.99/month, 20 TB traffic
Funded AI startupUp to $350,000 over two years
Backed by a partner fundPortfolio tier up to $200,000
Selling to Microsoft shopsUp to $150,000, GitHub covered
Regulated European buyers€50,000, SecNumCloud 3.2
8 cloud providers for startups, side by side
Credits on the left, the post-credit price of a small machine on the right. Each price is in the currency the provider shows: dollars for AWS, Azure, Google and OVHcloud US, euros or Swiss francs for the providers that only publish those.
| Best for | Startup credits | Free plan | Team size | Visit | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OVHcloud | Best value after the credits | Start €10,000 for 1 year; Scale up to €100,000 | 4.2/5 | d2-4: $14.18/mo (monthly plan) | — | Bootstrapped and seed | Visit → |
| 2 | Hetzner | Best for founders who skip credits | No program, low price from day one | 4.1/5 | CPX22: €19.99/mo (monthly plan, shown unavailable) | — | Technical teams | Visit → |
| 3 | Scaleway | Best European alternative to OVHcloud | Founders €1,000, Early €9,000, Growth up to €36,000 | 4.0/5 | DEV1-M (3 vCPU): about €14.74/mo | — | European product teams | Visit → |
| 4 | Infomaniak | Best fixed price in Switzerland | CHF 300 over 3 months, no program | 4.0/5 | 4 vCPU, 8 GB: CHF 16.10/mo (bigger machine) | — | Small budgets | Visit → |
| 5 | Google Cloud | Biggest credits for a funded AI startup | Start $2,000 with no raise; up to $200,000 over 2 years, $350,000 for AI | 3.9/5 | Trial: $300 for 90 days | — | Funded AI startups | Visit → |
| 6 | Microsoft Azure | Best if you already live on GitHub and Microsoft | Up to $150,000 | 3.9/5 | B2s: about $30.37/mo | — | Enterprise B2B | Visit → |
| 7 | AWS | Deepest catalog, if a partner fund opens Portfolio | $1,000 solo, up to $200,000 via a fund | 3.8/5 | t3.medium: about $30.37/mo | — | Fund-backed startups | Visit → |
| 8 | 3DS Outscale | Best for regulated European buyers | €50,000 and 6 months of support | 3.6/5 | 2 vCPU, 4 GiB: about €64/mo | — | Public sector, health, finance | Visit → |
Prices read on each provider's official pricing page or catalog in 2026, Linux on demand, as listed (excluding VAT where the provider says so, as OVHcloud and Hetzner do). OVHcloud and Hetzner list a capped monthly plan, lower than the hourly rate times 730; elsewhere a month is 730 hours. The reference is a 2 vCPU machine: Scaleway DEV1-M (3 vCPU) and Infomaniak (4 vCPU) are their closest listed options, not the same machine. Hetzner's CPX22 page shows it as currently unavailable to order. Google's VM table is not readable on its official page, so we show its trial.
Is your tool missing from this page? Email us: hello@hackceleration.com
How we compared and scored
Most top results for this question are written by a cloud vendor ranking itself first, or they list program amounts copied from aggregators. Several show $5,000 for AWS Founders, when the official page says it starts at $1,000 and only select participants reach $5,000. None puts credits, post-credit price and egress in one view, even though those three numbers decide what year two costs.
We read every startup program page, every pricing page or official price API, and founder stories on Hacker News and dev.to. Anything we could not read on an official page stays off this page. DigitalOcean is out because its Hatch program says applications are temporarily paused. Vultr and Akamai are out because we could not verify their program terms on an official page.
Scores use the same rubric as our public cloud ranking, so each provider has one score across the site. Real cost weighs the most, because it is what remains when credits are gone. Credits do not change the score; they change your order of choice in year one, and each card says how.
- Real cost (VM and extras)Post-credit VM price, IPv4, egress, commitment.30%
- Services and depthManaged databases, Kubernetes, object storage, AI, regions.25%
- Ease of getting startedConsole, bill readability, documentation.20%
- Compliance and locationRegions, ISO 27001, HDS, SecNumCloud.15%
- SupportWhat is included and what you pay for.10%
No affiliate link changes a score or a rank.
OVHcloud
OVHcloud is the provider that leaves you in the best shape on month 13. Its startup program has two tiers. Start gives €10,000 in cloud credits for one year, plus 6 hours of one-on-one time with an engineer. Scale goes up to €100,000 for one year, with up to 20 engineer hours. Partner accelerators can also open the larger amount to their members.
The credits are in euros because the program runs from Europe, but OVHcloud also sells in dollars from its US regions. There, a d2-4 instance (2 vCPU, 4 GB, 50 GB) costs $14.18 a month, or $0.0256 an hour. And here is the line that matters for a startup: outbound public traffic is included in the instance price in every location except Singapore and Sydney. Serve video or large files and you will not discover a bandwidth line on your first paid invoice.
The catch is the catalog. Managed databases, Kubernetes and object storage exist, but the list of managed services is much shorter than on AWS or Google Cloud. Some founders also complain about tooling and support.
- Start tier: €10,000 in credits and 6 engineer hours
- Outbound traffic included outside Singapore and Sydney
- d2-4 at $14.18/month in US regions
- ✓Lowest post-credit bill of the providers with a program
- ✓No egress surprise on the invoice
- ✓US and EU regions, prices shown in each market's currency
- ✗Fewer managed services than AWS or Google
- ✗Credits in euros, run from the European program
- ✗Tooling and support criticized by some founders
Our first pick for a startup that cares about year two. The credits are smaller than the US giants', but the machine stays cheap afterward and egress never shows up on the bill.
Hetzner
Hetzner runs no startup program, and that is the point. The German host bets on low prices for everyone from day one instead of credits that expire. A CPX22 (2 AMD vCPU, 4 GB, 80 GB NVMe) costs €19.99 a month in its EU locations, or €0.0320 an hour.
Egress is where it pulls away. Its EU cloud servers include 20 TB of traffic a month, and overage costs €1 per TB. On developer forums, Hetzner is the name founders reach for after their first real AWS or Google invoice. Several describe a migration they started too late, once their app already leaned on services they could not take with them.
The limit: very few managed services. You install and maintain your database, backups and monitoring yourself. Its data center parks in Germany and Finland are ISO/IEC 27001 certified, and some configurations show as unavailable at checkout.
- 20 TB of traffic included per month in the EU
- Overage at €1 per TB
- IPv4 included with the CPX22
- ✓Low, flat prices with no month-13 cliff
- ✓An invoice you can predict
- ✓Clean console, quick to start
- ✗No startup credits at all
- ✗Few managed services: you run everything
- ✗No health-data (HDS) hosting
The right call if someone on your team is comfortable with Linux. You give up free credits and gain a bill that never jumps.
Scaleway
Scaleway is a French cloud with regions in Europe. Its DEV1-M development instance (3 vCPU, 4 GB) costs €0.020196 an hour in Paris, about €14.74 a month if it runs nonstop. The PLAY2-NANO, with 2 vCPU and 4 GB, is €0.02754 an hour. Scaleway does not publish dollar prices, so budget in euros.
Its startup program has three tiers: Founders, up to €1,000 in credits to use over one year; Early Stage, pre-seed to seed, up to €9,000 over six months; Growth Stage, seed to Series A, up to €36,000 over one year. One founder reports being rejected by Scaleway and accepted by OVHcloud: the program is selective.
On compliance, Scaleway is ISO/IEC 27001 certified and offers HDS hosting in France. It is not SecNumCloud qualified; Scaleway itself says the qualification has not been granted yet. Public IPv4 is billed on top of the instance.
- DEV1-M at about €14.74/month
- Public, hourly price catalog
- HDS hosting in France
- ✓Low hourly prices
- ✓Readable public catalog
- ✓ISO/IEC 27001 and HDS
- ✗Top tier limited to seed to Series A
- ✗Public IPv4 billed separately
- ✗No dollar pricing
A solid second application next to OVHcloud. Apply to both and keep whichever accepts you.
Infomaniak
Infomaniak has no startup program, but it gives CHF 300 in credits to use within 3 months. That is enough to set up your stack and measure what it consumes. After that, a configuration with 4 vCPU, 8 GB of memory, 50 GB of disk and 1 TB of bandwidth costs CHF 16.10 a month. That is twice our reference machine for a price close to the cheapest.
Prices are shown in Swiss francs. The data centers are in Switzerland, rated Tier 3+, and certified ISO 14001, ISO 50001, ISO 9001 and ISO 27001. Switzerland is not in the EU: if a customer asks for EU hosting, confirm Switzerland works for them before you sign.
The limit is depth. The managed database and AI catalog is far shorter than on AWS or Google. For a simple product that needs to run for years without surprise, that rarely matters.
- CHF 300 in credits over 3 months
- 4 vCPU and 8 GB for CHF 16.10/month
- ISO 27001 data centers in Switzerland
- ✓Lots of compute for the price
- ✓Fixed, predictable bill
- ✓Bandwidth bundled in the configuration
- ✗No startup program
- ✗Swiss hosting, outside the EU
- ✗Shorter service catalog
Pick it for a sturdy machine at a fixed price. Check that your customers are fine with Swiss hosting.
Google Cloud
Google for Startups Cloud is the most generous program in this ranking. In year one it covers 100% of your spend up to $100,000 in credits. In year two it gives back 20% of your spend as credits, up to another $100,000. AI startups go up to $250,000 in year one and $350,000 in total.
There is also a door for bootstrapped teams. The Start tier gives $2,000 in credits to a company founded in the past 2 years with a working MVP, a clear business model and plans to raise soon. Small next to the funded tiers, but twice what AWS Founders starts at.
For the funded tiers, the terms are strict. You need funding from pre-seed to Series A, a company founded within the last three to five years depending on the tier, a live MVP and a verified business domain. Agencies, consultancies and crypto projects are excluded, and so are Marketplace purchases and third-party models.
The trap is year two. Credits cover only 20%, so you already pay 80% of your real bill before the program even ends. One small team on Hacker News describes moving to another big cloud once its Google credits ran out. Google's VM price table does not load in a readable form, so check e2-medium in your region with its calculator before you commit.
- Year 1: 100% of spend covered up to $100,000
- AI startups: up to $350,000 over two years
- $300 trial open to anyone
- ✓Largest credits for AI startups
- ✓Deep data and AI services
- ✓$2,000 Start tier with no raise, plus the trial
- ✗Big tiers require a funding round
- ✗Year 2 covers only 20%
- ✗Marketplace and third-party models excluded
Unbeatable for a funded AI startup that will spend on compute. For a plain web app, year two costs more than year one saved.
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft for Startups advertises up to $150,000 in Azure credits. The official page does not spell out tiers or validity, so get them in writing before you plan around them. Credits apply to consumption-billed Azure services. They do not cover the Marketplace or third-party models. The useful twist: link your Azure subscription to GitHub and the credits can pay for Copilot, Actions and Codespaces.
When credits run out, the subscription moves to pay-as-you-go with no pause. A B2s (2 vCPU, 4 GB) running Linux in East US then costs $0.0416 an hour, about $30.37 a month. The first 100 GB of internet egress each month are free, then standard data transfer out is billed at $0.087 per GB.
The catalog is as deep as AWS's. For a three-person team, the downside is a dense portal and a bill that takes effort to read.
- Up to $150,000 in credits advertised
- Credits can cover GitHub Copilot, Actions and Codespaces
- 100 GB of free egress per month
- ✓Trusted by enterprise buyers on Microsoft
- ✓Very broad catalog
- ✓GitHub spend covered by the same credits
- ✗Tiers and validity not detailed on the page
- ✗Egress at $0.087/GB past 100 GB
- ✗Dense portal and billing
Worth it when your customers are Microsoft shops and your team pays for GitHub. Otherwise the credits do not offset the heavier bill.
AWS
AWS Activate has two very different doors. On your own, the Founders tier gives $1,000 in Activate Credits, and some participants qualify for up to $5,000. With an Organization ID from a partner fund or accelerator, Portfolio goes up to $200,000. A separate, invite-only track for AI startups goes above $200,000. You need to be pre-Series B and founded in the last 10 years.
Outside the program, a new account gets $100 in credits and up to $100 more for exploring services. That free plan closes after 6 months or when the credits run out, whichever comes first.
After the credits, a t3.medium in us-east-1 costs $0.0416 an hour, about $30.37 a month, and a Graviton t4g.medium $0.0336, about $24.53. You get 100 GB of free data transfer out to the internet each month; past that, AWS lists $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB a month. The egress tip further down shows how fast that line can grow.
- Portfolio: up to $200,000 through a partner fund
- Graviton about 19% cheaper than t3.medium
- 100 GB of free egress per month
- ✓The deepest catalog of managed services
- ✓Easy hiring: everyone knows AWS
- ✓Most startup tooling assumes it
- ✗Only $1,000 without a partner investor
- ✗Egress billed past 100 GB
- ✗Hard to forecast the bill during credits
The pick when your investor unlocks Portfolio and your product needs AWS-only services. On $1,000 alone, a cheaper cloud wins over two years.
3DS Outscale
3DS Outscale, the Dassault Systèmes cloud, is the only provider here with a public cloud region qualified SecNumCloud 3.2 (cloudgouv), the French security label required by part of the public sector. It also lists ISO 27001, HDS and TISAX. Its entrepreneur program offers €50,000 in credits across all services, and 6 months of support. During those first 6 months, its SecNumCloud resources are paid out of those credits: they do not come on top of the €50,000.
Outscale prices in euros and bills compute and memory separately. That puts 2 vCPU and 4 GiB at €0.088 an hour in eu-west-2, about €64 a month, the highest post-credit price in this ranking. Its sovereign cloudgouv region costs €0.106 an hour. In return, outbound traffic is free in its European regions and its US regions.
The limit: a shorter catalog and a more technical setup. You pick Outscale because a contract demands it, not to ship a prototype.
- SecNumCloud 3.2, HDS, ISO 27001, TISAX
- €50,000 in credits and 6 months of support
- Free egress in EU and US regions
- ✓Opens demanding public and health contracts
- ✓Large credits for a European cloud
- ✓No egress fees
- ✗The priciest machine in this ranking
- ✗Shorter catalog
- ✗More technical setup
Only worth it when a buyer asks for SecNumCloud. Then the €50,000 buys six months to close that deal.
What you pay once the credits end
Credit amounts make headlines. The invoice that follows decides how long your runway lasts. Here is a 2 vCPU Linux machine on demand at each provider, after credits.
Priced in dollars
Priced in euros or francs
Egress, the line that bites
A quick way to compare
- Price your bill without credits by month 3.
- Add egress to the machine price.
- Check whether public IPv4 is included.
- Put your credit end date in the calendar.
Six habits so credits don't become handcuffs
"The startup credits are designed to become handcuffs eventually," as one Hacker News commenter put it. Here is what founders who switched clouds, often too late, wish they had done.
Build portable while credits pay
TrapContainers, a standard PostgreSQL or MySQL database and S3-compatible storage move to any cloud. Proprietary serverless functions and databases keep you where you are. Use them only where the gain is obvious.
- Avoid
- services with no equivalent elsewhere
Set an alert at your no-credit price
BudgetWhile credits run, the invoice reads $0 and nobody opens it. Set a budget alert at what you would pay without credits. One founder on Hacker News said he feared a CloudWatch log bill growing in silence: that alert is the fix.
- When
- day one
Start on one machine
TipLooking back, several founders say they would have rented one server and deployed with Docker Compose over ssh. Until you have real traffic, one well-backed-up machine costs less and moves in a day.
- Cost
- from $14.18/month
Watch egress from month one
TrapThe most quoted story: about $6,000 in month 13 for a streaming service with few users, almost all bandwidth, and still about $4,500 a month after three months of tuning. Track outbound gigabytes monthly, and pick a cloud that includes them if you serve heavy files.
- Watch
- outbound GB per month
Apply to more than one program
TipPrograms are selective. One founder was rejected by Scaleway and accepted by OVHcloud. Apply to two or three, keep the best offer, and run production on one cloud only.
- Example
- OVHcloud and Scaleway
Plan your exit before month 10
TimingA migration takes weeks, not days. If the forecast bill does not work, start moving two to three months before credits end, while they still pay for both environments.
- Buffer
- two to three months
Your profile, your cloud
The right cloud depends less on the catalog than on your funding, your buyers and what your product consumes.
Bootstrapped, small team
Funded, building AI
B2B selling to enterprises
Regulated European buyers
- No raise yet? Forget the big Google and AWS tiers.
- Serving video? Egress decides.
- Need SecNumCloud? Outscale, or a dedicated OVHcloud offer.
- Want a platform with no servers to run? Look at a PaaS instead of IaaS.
Cloud picked, what's next
These pages go further, depending on where you are.
Same VM priced at six providers.
Your AWS credits are endingSwitch from AWSAlternatives and migration.
You are already on HetznerSwitch from HetznerWhen you need managed services.
You are leaving DigitalOceanSwitch from DigitalOceanAlternatives and migration.
You are leaving HerokuSwitch from HerokuKeep it simple, pay less.
You only need one serverBest VPS hostingSimpler than a full cloud.
Cloud for startups · FAQ
What happens when startup cloud credits expire?
Your account rolls straight into pay-as-you-go. Nothing pauses and nothing gets shut down: on Azure, the subscription simply switches to standard rates. Unused credits are gone on the end date. Around month 10, run your bill as if you were already paying, so the first real invoice holds no surprise.Which cloud is best for a bootstrapped startup with no VC?
Without a partner investor, AWS Founders starts at $1,000 and Google's big tiers require a funding round, though its Start tier gives $2,000 to a company under 2 years old with a working MVP. OVHcloud's Start tier gives €10,000 with no raise mentioned on its page, and Hetzner skips credits entirely but stays cheap forever. For most bootstrapped teams, a low steady bill beats a large check that expires.Do startup credits cover GPUs and AI models?
Not always. On Google Cloud and Azure, third-party models and Marketplace purchases are excluded from credits. If your product runs on a model sold through a marketplace, your credits may never touch that line. Check how the model is billed before you build on it.Is AWS Activate worth it for an early-stage startup?
It depends on your investor. Through an Activate Provider (a partner fund or accelerator), the Portfolio tier goes up to $200,000. On your own, Founders gives $1,000, with some participants getting up to $5,000. $1,000 would cover a lone t3.medium in us-east-1 (about $30 a month) for a long time, but a real stack with a database, storage and egress burns through it far faster.Why do cloud bills spike after the credits run out?
Mostly egress and managed services that quietly consume, like logs. AWS and Azure both include 100 GB of free internet egress per month; past that, every gigabyte is billed. During the credits nobody reads the invoice, so set a budget alert on day one at the amount you would pay without credits.Does Hetzner have a startup program?
No. Hetzner offers no startup credits. It competes on price for everyone instead: a CPX22 with 2 vCPU and 4 GB costs €19.99 a month in its EU locations, with 20 TB of outbound traffic included.Which cloud should a startup selling to regulated European customers pick?
3DS Outscale is the only provider here with a public cloud region qualified SecNumCloud 3.2 (cloudgouv), the French security label some public buyers require, and its program offers €50,000 in credits. For health data in France, OVHcloud, Scaleway and Outscale offer HDS hosting. Ask your customer which certification they actually need before you choose.