Compare / AWS Lightsail vs Scaleway Instances
AWS Lightsail vs Scaleway Instances
Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — AWS Lightsail checked 2026-08-06, Scaleway checked 2026-08-06.
The short version
AWS Lightsail wins more of our comparison points, but Scaleway Instances still fits if eU projects that want real cloud ergonomics — hourly billing, CLI, Terraform, managed databases — without a US hyperscaler describes you.
Price AWS Lightsail
AWS Lightsail is cheaper at every stage we model — about $39/mo even for a growing project.
Ease Tie
Both take similar effort to get a first deploy live.
Free tier AWS Lightsail
AWS Lightsail has a free tier; Scaleway Instances doesn't.
Features Tie
Feature coverage is even: each wins 1 of the 15 rows we track.
What developers say about this matchup
We couldn't find a substantive first-person discussion comparing this exact pair. We leave the section empty instead of filling it with vendor marketing or generic SEO comparisons.
At a glance
| AWS Lightsail | Scaleway Instances | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Projects that want predictable AWS — a fixed-price server with a clear upgrade path into the wider AWS ecosystem. | EU projects that want real cloud ergonomics — hourly billing, CLI, Terraform, managed databases — without a US hyperscaler. |
| How deploys work | Pick a blueprint (WordPress, LAMP, Node.js, plain Linux), get SSH in the browser or your terminal, and manage it like any VPS. | Spin up an instance from the console or the scw CLI, then manage it like any VPS; Terraform and cloud-init are first-class. |
| The tradeoff | Costs more per spec than the European VPS crowd, and stopped instances keep billing. | À la carte pricing makes the real cost higher than the sticker, and account verification can be painful. |
| Free tier | 90-day free trial (750 hours/month) on the $5–$12 Linux bundles and the $15 database, plus $100–$200 in new-account AWS credits. | None |
What you'd realistically pay
AWS Lightsail Scaleway Instances
| Project stage | AWS Lightsail | Scaleway Instances | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just starting | ≈$5/mo Nano — 2 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB SSD, 1 TB transfer. $3.50 as IPv6-only. Free for the first 90 days. | ≈€10.42/mo DEV1-S + IPv4 + 10 GB volume — ~€6.55 instance (2 shared vCPU, 2 GB RAM) + €2.92 IPv4 + ~€0.95 block storage. Ex-VAT, ~730h/month. | AWS Lightsail |
| Steady traffic | ≈$12/mo Small — 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 60 GB SSD, 3 TB transfer. | ≈€24.92/mo PLAY2-NANO + IPv4 + 20 GB volume — ~€20.10 instance (2 shared vCPU, 4 GB RAM) + €2.92 IPv4 + ~€1.90 block storage. | AWS Lightsail |
| Growing | ≈$39/mo Medium + managed database — $24 Medium (4 GB RAM, 4 TB transfer) plus the $15 managed MySQL/PostgreSQL bundle. | ≈€45/mo PLAY2-MICRO + IPv4 + 20 GB volume — ~€40.20 instance (4 shared vCPU, 8 GB RAM) + €2.92 IPv4 + ~€1.90 block storage. | AWS Lightsail |
AWS Lightsail pricing notes
- Billed hourly up to the monthly cap — partial months cost less, but stopped instances still bill.
- IPv6-only bundles are 20–30% cheaper; an unattached static IPv4 costs ~$3.60/month.
- Bundles scale up to 64 vCPU / 256 GB RAM ($1,764/month), with compute- and memory-optimized variants.
Scaleway Instances pricing notes
- Hourly billing (~730 h/month), ex-VAT, with no egress fees — bandwidth is an unmetered per-instance speed.
- Flexible IPv4 €0.004/h (~€2.92/month); IPv6 is free. Block Storage 5K is €0.000130/GB/h (~€0.095/GB/month).
- Savings Plans (12/36-month commitment) take up to 25% off compute.
- New Professional accounts with a payment method get €100 in credit.
Our ratings
Ease of use
Pricing clarity AWS Lightsail
Free tier AWS Lightsail
Scaling
Control
Feature by feature
AWS Lightsail wins 1, Scaleway Instances wins 1, with 13 even.
Deploy workflow
| AWS Lightsail | Scaleway Instances | |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy from Git push | No No deploy pipeline — bring your own CI or scripts. | No Not on Instances — bring your own CI, or use Scaleway’s separate serverless products. |
| Preview deploys | No Nothing built in. | No Nothing built in. |
| Official CLI | Yes The AWS CLI covers Lightsail end to end. | Yes The scw CLI covers instances, volumes, IPs, and snapshots. |
| Instant rollbacks | Partial Snapshots restore machines ($0.05/GB-month); no deploy-level rollback. | Partial Snapshots and images restore machines; no deploy-level rollback. |
Platform
| AWS Lightsail | Scaleway Instances | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom domains + HTTPS | Yes Lightsail DNS zones are included; TLS is yours via certbot or a Lightsail distribution. | Yes Point DNS at the server; TLS is yours via certbot or a proxy. |
| Built-in CDN / edge network | Yes Lightsail distributions add a CloudFront-backed CDN from $2.50/month (first year of 50 GB/month free). | Partial Edge Services adds a CDN in front of load balancers and object storage; nothing automatic on a bare instance. |
| Serverless functions | No Not in Lightsail — that is the wider AWS (Lambda), with the à la carte billing this product avoids. | No Not on Instances — Scaleway sells separate Serverless Containers and Functions products. |
| Docker containers | Yes Install Docker on any instance, or use the Lightsail container service from $7/month. | Yes Docker-ready images or install it yourself. |
| SSH / shell access | Yes Full root SSH, including a browser-based terminal. | Yes Full root SSH. |
| EU hosting region | Yes Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Paris, Stockholm, and Spain. | Yes Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw, and Milan — EU-only by design. |
Runtime & operations
| AWS Lightsail | Scaleway Instances | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic scaling | No No autoscaling — resize by restoring a snapshot to a bigger bundle. | No Manual resizing on Instances; autoscaling lives in the serverless products. |
| Scale to zero | No Stopped instances bill at full rate; only deletion stops charges. | Partial A fully powered-off (archived) instance stops compute billing, but IPs and volumes keep billing. |
| Scheduled jobs | Yes Classic cron on the box. | Yes Classic cron on the box. |
| Managed database | Yes Managed MySQL/PostgreSQL bundles from $15/month. | Yes Managed PostgreSQL/MySQL from ~€11.40/month plus storage; Redis and MongoDB too. |
| Logs & metrics built in | Partial Instance metrics and alarms in the console; deeper monitoring means CloudWatch or your own stack. | Partial Cockpit collects instance metrics and logs into managed Grafana; app-level instrumentation is yours. |
Watch out for
AWS Lightsail
- Stopped instances bill at the full rate — only deleting an instance (snapshot first, $0.05/GB-month) stops charges.
- Transfer overage costs $0.09/GB in US/EU regions, and some regions (Mumbai, Sydney, São Paulo…) include only half the listed allowance.
- The new-account AWS Free plan expires after 6 months or when credits run out, then the account auto-closes with a 90-day grace period.
- Outgrowing Lightsail means migrating to EC2 — a real project, not a plan toggle.
Scaleway
- List prices exclude storage and public IPv4: add ~€2.92/month for a flexible IPv4 and ~€0.095/GB/month for block storage.
- Scaleway raised prices across Stardust, PLAY2, PRO2, BASIC3, and storage on 1 June 2026.
- "Standby" bills as a running instance; only a full power-off (archive) stops compute billing — and IPs and volumes keep billing regardless.
- Automated KYC can freeze accounts (sometimes with servers running) until you re-verify with ID and selfie.
- The famous €0.43/month Stardust instances are chronically out of stock.
Read the full reviews: AWS Lightsail and Scaleway. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.