Editor Sebastiaan Smits ·
Published October 30, 2026 · Updated October 30, 2026
Teams leave Google Cloud when the bill is hard to model, when support is priced as a share of spend, or when data leaving the platform costs too much. Most move plain servers to Hetzner, DigitalOcean or Scaleway, and Kubernetes work to Civo, while those who stay with a hyperscaler pick AWS or Azure.
Short answer: The closest replacements for Google Cloud in our cloud computing platforms ranking are Hetzner Cloud, DigitalOcean and Scaleway. Choose Hetzner Cloud if your workload is ordinary servers and you want a short price list with European locations. The other 13 entries come from our Best Cloud Computing Platforms in 2026 list as well, and every one is set against Google Cloud specifically, with a note on the cases where Google Cloud should stay.
Visibility in our rankings can be paid for. Payment moves a vendor's position within the shortlist; it never adds a vendor, and it never changes a word of the review or of this page. The first three alternatives go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow in their ranked order. How it works: placement disclosure · editorial process.
Google lists automatic sustained use discounts of up to 30%, one- and three-year commitments of up to 37% and 55% (70% for memory-optimized machines), and Spot prices up to 91% below on-demand. Which one applies depends on the product and on what you commit, so a small buyer has to model each separately.
Basic Support is free. Standard is 3% of monthly charges with a $29 minimum, Enhanced is 10% on the first $10,000 with a $100 minimum, and Premium has a $15,000 minimum. The percentage is applied to list prices before credits or discounts.
Internet egress is priced per GiB by source region and network tier. GKE adds $0.10 per cluster per hour on every cluster, softened by a $74.40 monthly credit that covers one zonal or Autopilot cluster. Several smaller clouds list free or bundled transfer instead.
Ordered by how well each fits a team leaving Google Cloud; our own placement among 15 ranked products is in the last column.
| # | Alternative | Headquarters | Switch if | Our rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Hetzner Cloud | Germany | your workload is ordinary servers and you want a short price list with European locations | #1 |
| 2 |  DigitalOcean | United States | you want per-second virtual machines, managed Kubernetes and databases without a hyperscaler console | #2 |
| 3 |  Scaleway | France | data transfer out is the part of your Google bill you most want to remove | #3 |
| 4 |  OVHcloud | France | you need a French provider with a SecNumCloud-qualified private option next to public cloud | #4 |
| 5 |  Civo | United Kingdom | GKE is the main thing you run and you want to drop its cluster fee and transfer charges | #6 |
| 6 |  UpCloud | Finland | you want free outbound transfer and a Nordic provider with a sovereign-cloud offer | #14 |
| 7 |  Akamai Cloud (Linode) | United States | you want pooled transfer allowances across many small servers instead of per-tier egress rates | #5 |
| 8 |  Fly.io | United States | your Google estate is mostly small containers and you want per-second billing near your users | #12 |
| 9 |  Cloudflare | United States | large downloads from Cloud Storage drive your bill and you can run code on Workers | #13 |
| 10 |  Contabo | Germany | you run steady, low-priority workloads on virtual servers and accept a long-term price | #15 |
| 11 |  Amazon Web Services | United States | you want a hyperscaler with a different service catalog and the same breadth of regions | #7 |
| 12 |  Microsoft Azure | United States | most of your users, identity and licensing already sit with Microsoft | #9 |
| 13 |  Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | United States | outbound transfer is a large part of your bill and you run, or plan to run, Oracle databases | #10 |
| 14 |  IBM Cloud | United States | you want an enterprise vendor with free Lite plans and commitment options you can add later | #11 |
Servers, private networks, firewalls and a load balancer on one short product list, with locations in Germany, Finland, Singapore and the USA. Stateful firewalls carry no extra charge. It is a place to run machines, so analytics warehouses and machine-learning platforms stay behind with Google.
Switch from Google Cloud if your workload is ordinary servers and you want a short price list with European locations.
Droplets are billed per second since January 1, 2026, and each size bundles outbound transfer, 500 GiB on the $4 plan. The Kubernetes control plane is free, with high availability as a paid option. Managed databases exist, but it is not a data-platform vendor.
Switch from Google Cloud if you want per-second virtual machines, managed Kubernetes and databases without a hyperscaler console.
A French company (Scaleway SAS) that advertises flat pricing with no egress fees, which removes the transfer line Google bills by tier and source region. A flexible IPv4 address costs EUR 0.004 an hour excluding VAT. Startups can claim up to EUR 36,000 in credits.
Switch from Google Cloud if data transfer out is the part of your Google bill you most want to remove.
Public Cloud with Savings Plans sits beside bare metal and a private cloud labelled SecNumCloud-qualified, plus Anti-DDoS infrastructure on its security pages. Prices live on a separate price page. The product families are many, so budget time to read the terms of each one.
Switch from Google Cloud if you need a French provider with a SecNumCloud-qualified private option next to public cloud.
Kubernetes first. The control plane is free, worker nodes bill hourly from $5.43 a month, and egress and ingress are both listed as free and unlimited. A $250 sign-up credit appears on the pricing page. Databases, an S3-compatible object store and GPUs exist, in a narrower list than Google's.
Switch from Google Cloud if GKE is the main thing you run and you want to drop its cluster fee and transfer charges.
A Finnish provider (UpCloud Ltd) whose pages advertise zero-cost egress and a Simple Backup add-on, with a separate EU sovereign cloud solution page. Its pricing pages returned an access block to our fetch, so plan prices were not read here and need checking directly.
Switch from Google Cloud if you want free outbound transfer and a Nordic provider with a sovereign-cloud offer.
Linode's virtual machines now under Akamai. Network transfer is counted in global and data-center pools, overage is billed per service, and a service with no included transfer bills all of it. That is a different shape from Google's per-GiB tiers. Its pricing page refused our fetch.
Switch from Google Cloud if you want pooled transfer allowances across many small servers instead of per-tier egress rates.
Runs containers as Machines billed by the second, with no platform fee and the smallest always-on app at $2.19 per 30 days. Outbound data costs $0.02 per GB in North America and Europe, and inbound is free. The trial lasts two hours of runtime or seven days.
Switch from Google Cloud if your Google estate is mostly small containers and you want per-second billing near your users.
R2 object storage costs $0.015 per GB-month on the Standard class and charges nothing for egress on any storage class, which makes it the direct comparison for Cloud Storage. Compute runs on Workers rather than virtual machines, so move storage first and check Workers limits before planning the rest.
Switch from Google Cloud if large downloads from Cloud Storage drive your bill and you can run code on Workers.
Cloud VPS plans priced as an effective monthly rate over a 24-month subscription, from EUR 5.50 including VAT, with a one-month minimum initial contract and 200 Mbit/s ports. Outgoing traffic is unlimited under a fair usage policy that allows throttling. You operate the server yourself.
Switch from Google Cloud if you run steady, low-priority workloads on virtual servers and accept a long-term price.
The other hyperscaler most Google estates compare first. The free plan gives up to $200 in credits over six months, then the account closes unless you convert, and 30-plus services stay free within limits. Leaving AWS later also has a transfer waiver, so exit terms resemble Google's.
Switch from Google Cloud if you want a hyperscaler with a different service catalog and the same breadth of regions.
The free account combines a $200 credit for 30 days, free monthly amounts of 20-plus services for 12 months, and 65-plus services that stay free. After that it is pay as you go. It suits Microsoft-centered organizations; usage-based billing complexity travels with you.
Switch from Google Cloud if most of your users, identity and licensing already sit with Microsoft.
New accounts get a US$300 credit for 30 days, then Always Free services continue. The price list shows the first 10 TB of outbound data per month free in each region group it lists. One free account is allowed per person, and idle accounts may be suspended after 30 days.
Switch from Google Cloud if outbound transfer is a large part of your bill and you run, or plan to run, Oracle databases.
The pay-as-you-go account opens the full catalog, including Lite plans that are free with no time limit, and IBM states there are no long-term commitments on it. Billable services charge fixed monthly or by usage. Promotional credits on its pricing page are product-specific, such as USD 1,000 for 120 days on bare metal for VPC.
Switch from Google Cloud if you want an enterprise vendor with free Lite plans and commitment options you can add later.
Stay with Google Cloud when BigQuery, its AI APIs or GKE sit at the center of the workload. Those are services, not servers, so moving them means rebuilding pipelines instead of copying a machine. Small side projects can also sit in the free tier at zero cost.
Google credits transfer fees only for migrations that start after an Exit Notice. Fourteen days after filing, a 30-day window opens in which you must start moving data, with two working days of warning to your support agent. Transfers must run over the internet and cover products on Google's data-portability list.
The migration period lasts at least 30 days, you then have up to 180 days to send the completion notice, and termination lands on a month end at least 30 days later. The credit appears on the final invoice. The program is per service, so you can leave Compute Engine and keep BigQuery.
Customers with an EEA billing address may not move workloads during the final Data Recovery Period, and a partial move of one service does not qualify. Google points European customers to Data Transfer Essentials for traffic between their own services on different clouds, but not for serving end users.
Yes, if you file an Exit Notice first and stop using the service you are leaving. Google then adds a credit for the migration to your final invoice. It covers transfers over the internet for products on its data-portability list, and Google reserves the right to review repeated requests.
Plan on several months. There is a 14-day wait after the Exit Notice, a 30-day initiation period, a migration period of at least 30 days, a completion notice up to 180 days later, and termination at the next month end after at least 30 days. Google may extend the migration period for technical reasons.
No, the free transfer program requires you to end all use of the Google Cloud service you are leaving, and partial moves of one service do not qualify. You can keep other services, for example BigQuery while leaving Compute Engine. European customers may look at Data Transfer Essentials for ongoing cross-cloud traffic.
AWS does. Its news blog says free data transfer out to the internet is available to all customers worldwide when they move off AWS, by asking Support, without closing the account. Eligible non-EU customers had 180 days to complete the move per an update dated 10/8/26. Check each target's terms before committing.
Not at Civo or DigitalOcean. Civo says the control plane is free and DigitalOcean says the same for its standard control plane, with high availability as an extra. Google charges $0.10 per cluster per hour on every GKE cluster, with a monthly credit that covers one zonal or Autopilot cluster.
Only if you were paying Google for a paid tier. Google bills Standard, Enhanced and Premium support as a percentage of eligible charges, with minimums of $29, $100 and $15,000 a month. Other providers' support terms differ and were not compared here, so read each one before moving.
Every price, plan limit and product statement about Google Cloud here was read on the vendors' own pages on October 30, 2026. Either can change at any time, so read the figures as of that day.
Sebastiaan Smits, Founder, wrote, edited and fact-checked this page.
Founder of The Interregnum and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page here; research and drafting are AI-assisted. Last reviewed October 30, 2026.
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