Resources // Cloud Providers
Scaleway Startup Program
- High-value
Offer Up to €36,000 in cloud credits
Suits for Non-VC-backedVC-backedResearchersOpen-source
Updated Jun 2026
The offer
- Three tiers of free credits by stage: Founders, up to €1,000 over 12 months; Early Stage, €1,500/month for 6 months (€9,000); Growth Stage, €3,000/month for 12 months (€36,000)
- Credits work across Scaleway’s full European stack: CPU/GPU instances (incl. H100 / L40S / L4), object and block storage, Kubernetes, managed databases, and Generative APIs
- A dedicated Program Lead plus a Customer Success Manager (CSM not included on the Founders tier), support-plan credits, and a private community Slack
- EU-based (French) cloud, so data stays in-region, useful if GDPR / data residency is part of your pitch
Who qualifies
- Open to startups of any vertical; one application form, reviewed by an admission committee each week, which assigns your tier
- Tier by stage: Founders = migrating / initial build; Early Stage = pre-seed to seed; Growth = seed to Series A
- Credits expire at program end (6 or 12 months), and any spend above your monthly vouchers is billed to you
- Aggregators mention an EU-incorporation expectation; the official page says "any startup," so confirm if you're outside the EU
Community Insights
On Hacker News, developers increasingly cite Scaleway as the closest thing the EU has to a real hyperscaler alternative. One user runs “serverless containers, jobs, managed container registry, managed database, VPC, IAM, DNS, managed Grafana and object storage” on it and notes the feature set is expanding (recent managed ClickHouse and OpenSearch). It is a strong DigitalOcean-class cloud that stops short of an enterprise AWS replacement. A few users find its compute pricier than bare-metal hosts like Hetzner for raw 24/7 workloads. For EU data residency plus credits, it is a sensible pick.
Best Practices (from community tips)
- Apply on the tier you actually qualify for and ask the committee which credits you’ll get. Don’t budget around the €36,000 headline.
- Lean on managed services and object storage. These are the parts people rate most cost-competitive.
- Use it for dynamic, pay-by-the-hour workloads; for static 24/7 boxes, price it against a bare-metal host first.
- Model your post-credit burn before the 6 or 12-month clock ends, since overage bills at standard rates.
- If EU data residency is a selling point, document it. Scaleway markets sovereignty heavily and offers co-marketing.
- Join the private Slack early; CSM access (Early Stage and up) is where most of the non-credit value sits.