French cloud provider: fixed-size virtual machines from €6.55 a month for a 2 vCPU DEV1-S before storage and IPv4, billed hourly with a 60-minute minimum, where powering off stops the compute meter but storage and the IPv4 keep billing.
Short answer: One always-on personal agent (2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 20 GiB) costs about $22.59 a month here, the 9th cheapest of the 22 providers that run it as described. The AI model adds about $1.88 a month on top (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (1017), 30 requests a day at 40k tokens each, median zero-retention price; from $0.46 at the cheapest host). Fits well: An agent that is idle most of the day: a powered-off DEV1-M costs $2.11 of block storage (or $0.80 of local SSD) and $4.06 of IPv4 a month, not the $17.21 of compute.
Scaleway Instances are fixed-size virtual machines (vCPU, RAM and a bandwidth cap in one offer) sold by the hour from data centres in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan. Storage is not part of the offer: you attach a block volume or, on DEV1 and GP1, a local SSD, and pay for the provisioned size.
It is an ordinary Linux server product rather than a sandbox service. You get root, SSH, your own kernel, Docker if you install it, a flexible public IPv4 and a security group. There is no prompt endpoint, no memory snapshot, no idle sleep and no session limit.
The ranges in this card are the shared-CPU ones a reader would actually rent: Development (STARDUST1, DEV1, PLAY2) and General Purpose (BASIC3, BASIC2-A on Arm, PRO2, GP1). Dedicated STANDARD3 and POP2, the compute- and memory-optimised ranges, GPU Instances and Elastic Metal are outside it.
The billing shape is the interesting part. Unlike most VPS providers, powering an Instance off stops compute billing: you keep paying for storage and for any reserved flexible IPv4, but not for the vCPUs. Short tasks are the opposite problem, because every resource is billed for at least 60 minutes.
At a glance
Who it is for
People who want an ordinary always-on Linux server in the EU, priced in euros, from a French provider with ISO 27001 and HDS, and who value a cheap idle state: a machine that is powered off between sessions costs storage and its IP rather than a full monthly plan. It suits a personal agent, a chat bot, n8n, a small MCP server or a coding box. It is a poor fit for many short runs, because the 60-minute minimum makes a ten-minute task cost a full hour.
Isolation
A full virtual machine per Instance with its own kernel, disk and public IP: root, Docker inside, real SSH, any TCP port. The hypervisor is never named and nested virtualisation is not documented. GPU Instances are a separate, much more expensive range on the same platform.
Sizes
Fixed offers only, no custom CPU/RAM split. Shared and development ranges run from 1 vCPU / 1 GiB (STARDUST1-S) to 48 vCPU / 256 GiB (GP1-XL), with 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps of public bandwidth. Disk is separate: block volumes from 5 GB to 15 TB, up to 16 per Instance, or local SSD up to 600 GB on GP1. The boot volume must be at least 10 GB. Resizing means changing offer with a reboot of up to five minutes.
A personal agent here
About $22.59 a month for one always-on 2 vCPU / 4 GiB machine (DEV1-M: 3 vCPU / 4 GiB / 20 GiB), before the AI model. Change the numbers
Our reading of the sourced material on this page, not a provider claim.
Fits well
An agent that is idle most of the day: a powered-off DEV1-M costs $2.11 of block storage (or $0.80 of local SSD) and $4.06 of IPv4 a month, not the $17.21 of compute.
An always-on small agent: DEV1-M at $22.59 a month including block storage and IPv4, or DEV1-S at $12.41 for a chat bot or MCP server.
EU residency with a French legal flavour: four EU regions, ISO 27001, HDS, a published DPA and no US CLOUD Act exposure.
No egress bill: Instance prices include egress and there is no per-GB charge, only the shape bandwidth cap.
A coding box that is used eight hours a day: DEV1-L costs $15.92 a month at 160 hours plus disk and IP, because the stopped hours do not bill compute.
Fits badly
Many short runs: every task under an hour pays a full hour of compute, disk and IPv4, so 1,000 ten-minute tasks cost $29.49 instead of about $5.
Bursty parallel fan-out: default quotas are single-digit per offer type, so hundreds of simultaneous machines need a support request.
Anything that needs a memory-preserving pause, an idle sleep, a wake-on-request, a preview URL or a sandbox API.
Workloads that need a written SLA: DEV1, GP1, PLAY2 and PRO2 have no SLO at all.
Arm-averse software: the BASIC2-A offers are arm64 and the calculator may pick one for large sizes.
How it bills
Model
Pay-as-you-go per resource: the Instance by the hour, the volume by provisioned GB-hour, and the flexible IPv4 by the hour. No plan fee, no commitment, no monthly cap. Prices are published in EUR before tax and invoiced monthly.
Meter
Hourly, with a minimum of 60 minutes per resource per start and stop event. DEV1-M is €0.0202/hour (about $0.0225), so an always-on month is 730 hours; the pricing page's 'approx. per month' is exactly the hourly rate × 730, not a cap.
While stopped
Powering off releases the hypervisor and stops compute billing. Attached storage (local kept or archived, or block volumes) and any reserved flexible IPv4 keep billing. Standby mode is different: the Instance stays allocated and is billed in full.
Plan fee
None. There is no subscription and no minimum commitment; Savings Plans are an optional discount for an hourly spend commitment, not a fee.
Minimum
A credit or debit card is required at signup. New Business customers with a valid payment method and no prior invoice get a €100 voucher, redeemable once. No Instance size is free, and default per-type quotas are small (DEV1-M 8 with a validated payment method, 15 with identity validated).
A cheap idle state: powering off stops compute billing, so a machine used three hours a day costs $8.20 rather than a full monthly plan ($6.88 on local SSD).
No egress fees and a real public IPv4/IPv6 with any port open and a security group in front.
EU-only footprint under French law, with ISO 27001, HDS and a published DPA.
Block volumes to 15 TB and local SSD up to 600 GB, both persistent without the machine.
A complete API with OpenAPI specs, an official CLI and Python, Go and TypeScript SDKs.
Fine-grained IAM with SAML SSO, SCIM, audit trail and scoped API keys.
Using it without writing code
Dashboard
Yes: the console creates Instances, volumes, snapshots, images, flexible IPs, security groups, private networks and templates, with an estimated cost before you confirm, a consumption view and billing alerts.
Without code
Partly. Creating the machine is clicking, and Docker or WordPress can be preselected as an InstantApp, but everything that makes it an agent host — the agent, the database, the certificate, the service unit — is a terminal.
Signup
A Scaleway account with a validated payment method; a credit or debit card is required, prepaid and virtual cards are refused, and identity validation raises the default quotas. Business accounts can claim a €100 voucher.
Docs and support
Extensive: docs.scaleway.com covers Instances, Block Storage, IAM, billing and troubleshooting, with OpenAPI specifications, an official CLI, Python/Go/JS SDKs and a Terraform provider. The billing pages contradict each other on the IPv4 price and the old per-second wording survives in third-party guides.
Tools you can use
Scaleway Instances has 7 of the 10 ways to drive a machine that this guide checks. From its own documentation; how pleasant each one is to use was not tested. Compare every provider
Resize while runningWith a catch Resizing is a change of offer that reboots the Instance with up to five minutes of downtime, and it needs block storage rather than a local volume.
Pre-started poolsWith a catch An autoscaling group can hold a fixed number of identical Instances behind a load balancer, but there is no way to claim one of them for a single task.
Mount outside storageWith a catch Object Storage speaks the S3 API, but Scaleway offers no native mount: you add s3fs, rclone or a similar client yourself, with the latency and consistency that implies.
Automatic HTTPSWith a catch Automatic HTTPS is not a property of an Instance: you either run Caddy or certbot on the server or put a paid Load Balancer (optionally with Edge Services) in front for a managed Let's Encrypt certificate.
Desktop for computer useWith a catch There is a Windows Server image with Remote Desktop, but no managed desktop for computer-use agents; a Linux desktop means installing X, VNC or a remote-desktop stack yourself.
Runs other platforms' agentsWith a catch Scaleway documents OpenClaw only as a client of its model API on a local machine, and publishes no Instance guide for OpenClaw or Hermes; a third-party guide recommends DEV1-M.
Flat monthly priceWith a catch There is no monthly price cap: the 'approx. per month' figure is simply the hourly rate multiplied by 730, so an always-on month costs exactly that and a partial month costs the hours used.
Uptime promise (SLA)With a catch The cheap ranges have no service-level objective at all: DEV1, GP1, PLAY2 and PRO2 are listed as 'No SLO', and only BASIC3-X among the shared ranges carries 99%.
A subsidiary of the iliad Group (the French telecoms group founded by Xavier Niel); no separate stock listing or venture round is published for Scaleway.
“A subsidiary of the iliad Group, Scaleway currently operates in France, Poland, Italy, and the Netherlands, with upcoming deployments in Sweden and Germany.”scaleway.comdocs-confirmed
Regions
Four multi-AZ EU regions: Paris (fr-par, three AZ), Amsterdam (nl-ams), Warsaw (pl-waw) and Milan (it-mil), with Sweden and Germany announced.
“Scaleway currently operates in France, Poland, Italy, and the Netherlands”scaleway.comdocs-confirmed
Certifications
ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and HDS (French health-data hosting); SecNumCloud qualification is under assessment. No SOC 2 report is listed.
“Scaleway is committed to obtaining the most stringent certifications (ISO 27001, HDS, SecNumCloud – currently undergoing assessment)”scaleway.comdocs-confirmed
Status and SLA
A public status page, and an Instance SLA that gives 99% to BASIC2-A/BASIC3-X, 99.5% to dedicated and specialised ranges, and no SLO at all to DEV1, GP1, PLAY2 and PRO2.
A Data Processing Agreement is published with the contracts and governs data processed on the customer's behalf; the privacy policy names it explicitly.
“The data collected for the operation of our services, where Scaleway acts as a processor, is governed by our General Conditions of Services as well as our Data Processing Agreement (DPA).”scaleway.comdocs-confirmed
Caveats and contradictions
Shown as the research found them. A contradiction means the provider's own pages disagree; an open question means the answer is not published.
01
The 60-minute minimum decides the cost of short work Open question
Scaleway's billing FAQ says each resource is billed for a minimum of 60 minutes per start and stop event. A ten-minute task therefore pays a full hour of compute, a full hour of volume and a full hour of IPv4. Some third-party guides still describe per-second billing; no current first-party page does, and the Instances FAQ says CPU Instances are billed per hour of uptime. If the older per-second behaviour were still in force, workload A would fall from $29.49 to about $4.90.
02
Two first-party prices for the flexible IPv4 Contradiction
The Instances FAQ says each Instance's flexible IPv4 costs €0.004/hour, while the network pricing page lists an Instance IPv4 at €0.005/hour and the 1 June 2026 price update moved Zonal Flexible IPv4 from €0.004 to €0.005. This guide uses €0.005/hour (€3.65 a month), the newer figure confirmed by two pages.
A stopped Instance is cheap, not free Open question
Compute billing stops on power-off, which is unusual for a VPS and makes idle time cheap. Storage and any reserved flexible IPv4 continue, so a small stopped machine still costs about $4.86 a month, most of it the IPv4. Standby mode is worse: it keeps the machine allocated and bills it in full.
04
The engine cannot bill a per-machine IPv4 through stopped hours Open question
RateCard.perMachine follows billed machine hours, so with billedWhileStopped false it would charge the IPv4 only for the 90 running hours of workload C, not the 730 hours the address is reserved. The card therefore leaves the IPv4 out and the provider cost adds it by hand. The smallest fix is one line in cost.ts: compute perMachineHours from run + stopped rather than run + stoppedBilled, and apply minimumSeconds to the tasks branch. A regression test on a stopped machine with a per-machine fee would cover it.
05
No SLA on the ranges this card prices cheapest Open question
The Instance SLA lists DEV1, GP1, PLAY2 and PRO2 as 'No SLO'; only BASIC2-A and BASIC3-X get 99%. A buyer who needs a contractual availability promise has to move up to a dedicated range or accept the risk.
06
STARDUST1-S is priced but missing from the default quota table Open question
STARDUST1-S is listed at €0.0006/hour (about €0.44 a month) on the pricing page and appears in the zone's product API, but it is absent from the default Organization quota table read on 2026-10-30, which lists DEV1, PLAY2, GP1, PRO2, BASIC2-A and POP2. Its orderability on a new account is unconfirmed, so the MCP route quotes it with that caveat and offers DEV1-S as the safe alternative.
07
One storage class is priced for every shape Open question
The card prices Block Storage 5K at €0.000130/GB/hour on every shape, because it is the only option on BASIC3, PLAY2, PRO2 and BASIC2-A and a valid option on DEV1, GP1 and STARDUST1. Local SSD on those three ranges costs €0.000049/GB/hour, 2.65× less: on local storage B is 0.86 instead of 4.15 and C is .88 instead of .20. The engine has one disk rate per plan and one stopped rate for the whole card, so a two-class card would misprice stopped block volumes; pricing one class keeps every printed number valid.
What users say
Opinion, not research. Read from public Trustpilot and Reddit pages on 30 October 2026. It changes no verdict on this page; everything above comes from Scaleway Instances's own documents.
Trustpilot 1.5 out of 5 from 360 reviews · see the page
Scaleway's own page for cloud instances, Dedibox, domains and Mac minis.
Most Scaleway reviews describe being charged, then blocked by identity checks or left without the machine they paid for, and refunds that take weeks. The minority who get running servers call the console clean and developer-friendly, while Reddit mostly mentions Scaleway as a pricier fallback when Hetzner is sold out.
How much to trust this: 1.5 from 360 reviews is a complaint-heavy sample; 17 of the 20 reviews read are one star. One five-star reviewer says the rating is undeserved, which is a useful counterweight but not a trend.
Complaint
Accounts restricted or deleted during verification
List-price illustrations from the calculator, not quotes. Prices checked 30 October 2026.
Flexible IPv4 extra$4.06 a month per machine on top of the machine price.
Shared CPUEvery plan priced here runs its vCPUs on physical cores shared with other Instances; dedicated-CPU ranges cost more and are not priced here.
A · 1,000 short tasks
$29.49
DEV1-M: 3 vCPU / 4 GiB / 10 GiB (plan: Pay as you go)
Machine time (DEV1-M)166.67 h × $0.02248$3.75
Minimum charge per run1,000 runs × ($0.02248 − $0.003747)$18.74
Flexible IPv41,000 runs × 1 h × $0.005565$5.56
Disk while running1,000 h (minimum per run) × 10 GiB × $0.0001447$1.45
No plan fee and no commitment: the Instance bills by the hour, the block volume by provisioned GB-hour, and the IPv4 by the hour until deleted.
Currency: Scaleway publishes EUR only and bills in euros; no USD list was found. These USD rates are the EUR list multiplied by the ECB reference rate for 29 October 2026, 1 EUR = 1.1130 USD. Prices are before tax; French VAT at 20% (or the EU customer's local rate) is added on the invoice.
The Instance price excludes storage and the public IPv4. A flexible IPv4 is €0.005/hour (€3.65 a month) and is billed while it is reserved, including while the Instance is powered off; IPv6 is free. The card does not include it: the engine's perMachine field follows billed machine hours, so it would drop the IPv4 for a stopped machine. Add $4.06 per machine-month, or $5.57 for 1,000 one-hour tasks.
Each resource is billed for a minimum of 60 minutes per start/stop event, so a 10-minute task pays a full hour of compute, storage and IPv4. minimumSeconds applies that floor to compute only; the calculator's storage and IPv4 lines for tasks mode are understated by the same minimum (see the provider notes).
There is no monthly cap: the 'approx. per month' on the pricing page is the hourly rate × 730. An always-on month therefore costs 730 hours at the hourly rate.
Powering an Instance off stops compute billing; attached storage and any reserved flexible IPv4 keep billing. Standby mode is different: the Instance stays allocated and is billed in full.
Disk is a separate volume and the card prices Block Storage 5K for every shape at €0.000130/GB/hour. That is the only storage option on BASIC3, PLAY2, PRO2 and BASIC2-A, and a valid option on DEV1, GP1 and STARDUST1. Those three ranges can attach local SSD instead at €0.000049/GB/hour, which is 2.65× cheaper: the engine has one disk rate per plan and one stopped rate for the whole card, so pricing both classes in one card would misprice stopped block volumes. On local SSD, B would be 0.86 instead of 4.15 and C .88 instead of .20.
Snapshots, images and Object Storage are separate products and are not in the calculator. Snapshots and unified snapshots are €0.000049/GB/hour; creating an image is free but its snapshots bill.
STARDUST1-S is included at its list price (€0.0006/hour, about €0.44 a month) although it is absent from the default Instance quota table read on 2026-10-30; its availability on a new account is unconfirmed.
The 15K block tier, GPU Instances, dedicated-vCPU STANDARD3/POP2 ranges, Elastic Metal and Savings Plans (up to 25% off for an hourly commitment) are outside this card.
BASIC2-A shapes are arm64 (Ampere); the calculator may pick one for large workloads, so check that the agent binaries exist for Arm.
Default per-type quotas are small (DEV1-M 8 Instances with a validated payment method, 15 with identity validated; PLAY2-NANO 5/10; GP1-XS 1/4), so a fan-out of hundreds of simultaneous machines is not available without a quota increase.
Savings Plans cut up to 25% for an hourly spend commitment but are not modelled.
Parent integration, 2026-10-30: the flexible IPv4 is priced as perMachine at €0.005/h (US$0.005565 at the card's ECB rate), capped at €3.65 (US$4.0625) a month, and the engine now bills it, and the 60-minute minimum on block storage for short tasks, through stopped hours as Scaleway's billing FAQ describes.
B · One always-on box
$44.15
DEV1-L: 4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 50 GiB (plan: Pay as you go)
Machine time (DEV1-L)730 h × $0.04768$34.81
Flexible IPv41 × min($4.06, 730 h × $0.005565)$4.06
Disk while running730 h × 50 GiB × $0.0001447$5.28
No plan fee and no commitment: the Instance bills by the hour, the block volume by provisioned GB-hour, and the IPv4 by the hour until deleted.
Currency: Scaleway publishes EUR only and bills in euros; no USD list was found. These USD rates are the EUR list multiplied by the ECB reference rate for 29 October 2026, 1 EUR = 1.1130 USD. Prices are before tax; French VAT at 20% (or the EU customer's local rate) is added on the invoice.
The Instance price excludes storage and the public IPv4. A flexible IPv4 is €0.005/hour (€3.65 a month) and is billed while it is reserved, including while the Instance is powered off; IPv6 is free. The card does not include it: the engine's perMachine field follows billed machine hours, so it would drop the IPv4 for a stopped machine. Add $4.06 per machine-month, or $5.57 for 1,000 one-hour tasks.
Each resource is billed for a minimum of 60 minutes per start/stop event, so a 10-minute task pays a full hour of compute, storage and IPv4. minimumSeconds applies that floor to compute only; the calculator's storage and IPv4 lines for tasks mode are understated by the same minimum (see the provider notes).
There is no monthly cap: the 'approx. per month' on the pricing page is the hourly rate × 730. An always-on month therefore costs 730 hours at the hourly rate.
Powering an Instance off stops compute billing; attached storage and any reserved flexible IPv4 keep billing. Standby mode is different: the Instance stays allocated and is billed in full.
Disk is a separate volume and the card prices Block Storage 5K for every shape at €0.000130/GB/hour. That is the only storage option on BASIC3, PLAY2, PRO2 and BASIC2-A, and a valid option on DEV1, GP1 and STARDUST1. Those three ranges can attach local SSD instead at €0.000049/GB/hour, which is 2.65× cheaper: the engine has one disk rate per plan and one stopped rate for the whole card, so pricing both classes in one card would misprice stopped block volumes. On local SSD, B would be 0.86 instead of 4.15 and C .88 instead of .20.
Snapshots, images and Object Storage are separate products and are not in the calculator. Snapshots and unified snapshots are €0.000049/GB/hour; creating an image is free but its snapshots bill.
STARDUST1-S is included at its list price (€0.0006/hour, about €0.44 a month) although it is absent from the default Instance quota table read on 2026-10-30; its availability on a new account is unconfirmed.
The 15K block tier, GPU Instances, dedicated-vCPU STANDARD3/POP2 ranges, Elastic Metal and Savings Plans (up to 25% off for an hourly commitment) are outside this card.
BASIC2-A shapes are arm64 (Ampere); the calculator may pick one for large workloads, so check that the agent binaries exist for Arm.
Default per-type quotas are small (DEV1-M 8 Instances with a validated payment method, 15 with identity validated; PLAY2-NANO 5/10; GP1-XS 1/4), so a fan-out of hundreds of simultaneous machines is not available without a quota increase.
Savings Plans cut up to 25% for an hourly spend commitment but are not modelled.
Parent integration, 2026-10-30: the flexible IPv4 is priced as perMachine at €0.005/h (US$0.005565 at the card's ECB rate), capped at €3.65 (US$4.0625) a month, and the engine now bills it, and the 60-minute minimum on block storage for short tasks, through stopped hours as Scaleway's billing FAQ describes.
C · Three hours a day
$8.20
DEV1-M: 3 vCPU / 4 GiB / 20 GiB (plan: Pay as you go)
Machine time (DEV1-M)90 h × $0.02248$2.02
Flexible IPv41 × min($4.06, 730 h × $0.005565)$4.06
Disk while running90 h × 20 GiB × $0.0001447$0.26
Disk while stopped640 h × 20 GiB × $0.0001447$1.85
No plan fee and no commitment: the Instance bills by the hour, the block volume by provisioned GB-hour, and the IPv4 by the hour until deleted.
Currency: Scaleway publishes EUR only and bills in euros; no USD list was found. These USD rates are the EUR list multiplied by the ECB reference rate for 29 October 2026, 1 EUR = 1.1130 USD. Prices are before tax; French VAT at 20% (or the EU customer's local rate) is added on the invoice.
The Instance price excludes storage and the public IPv4. A flexible IPv4 is €0.005/hour (€3.65 a month) and is billed while it is reserved, including while the Instance is powered off; IPv6 is free. The card does not include it: the engine's perMachine field follows billed machine hours, so it would drop the IPv4 for a stopped machine. Add $4.06 per machine-month, or $5.57 for 1,000 one-hour tasks.
Each resource is billed for a minimum of 60 minutes per start/stop event, so a 10-minute task pays a full hour of compute, storage and IPv4. minimumSeconds applies that floor to compute only; the calculator's storage and IPv4 lines for tasks mode are understated by the same minimum (see the provider notes).
There is no monthly cap: the 'approx. per month' on the pricing page is the hourly rate × 730. An always-on month therefore costs 730 hours at the hourly rate.
Powering an Instance off stops compute billing; attached storage and any reserved flexible IPv4 keep billing. Standby mode is different: the Instance stays allocated and is billed in full.
Disk is a separate volume and the card prices Block Storage 5K for every shape at €0.000130/GB/hour. That is the only storage option on BASIC3, PLAY2, PRO2 and BASIC2-A, and a valid option on DEV1, GP1 and STARDUST1. Those three ranges can attach local SSD instead at €0.000049/GB/hour, which is 2.65× cheaper: the engine has one disk rate per plan and one stopped rate for the whole card, so pricing both classes in one card would misprice stopped block volumes. On local SSD, B would be 0.86 instead of 4.15 and C .88 instead of .20.
Snapshots, images and Object Storage are separate products and are not in the calculator. Snapshots and unified snapshots are €0.000049/GB/hour; creating an image is free but its snapshots bill.
STARDUST1-S is included at its list price (€0.0006/hour, about €0.44 a month) although it is absent from the default Instance quota table read on 2026-10-30; its availability on a new account is unconfirmed.
The 15K block tier, GPU Instances, dedicated-vCPU STANDARD3/POP2 ranges, Elastic Metal and Savings Plans (up to 25% off for an hourly commitment) are outside this card.
BASIC2-A shapes are arm64 (Ampere); the calculator may pick one for large workloads, so check that the agent binaries exist for Arm.
Default per-type quotas are small (DEV1-M 8 Instances with a validated payment method, 15 with identity validated; PLAY2-NANO 5/10; GP1-XS 1/4), so a fan-out of hundreds of simultaneous machines is not available without a quota increase.
Savings Plans cut up to 25% for an hourly spend commitment but are not modelled.
Parent integration, 2026-10-30: the flexible IPv4 is priced as perMachine at €0.005/h (US$0.005565 at the card's ECB rate), capped at €3.65 (US$4.0625) a month, and the engine now bills it, and the 60-minute minimum on block storage for short tasks, through stopped hours as Scaleway's billing FAQ describes.