Building a SaaS in 2026 Using Only EU Infrastructure

No love for Gcore Labs? They're seemingly completely unknown but their free DNS product is rock solid. They also have a FaaS platform I've never gotten around to trying

I've posted this a couple times before when EU tech + Hetzner comes up (and probably will again):

I'm American and IMO, we should also take a look at whether we need to be using the big cloud providers or not. They're so much more expensive compared to smaller hosts like Hetzner, Vultr, and so on. It depends on what you're doing, of course, but I've been on Azure for ages (they had those free $150/month startup credits something like 10 years ago?), but I finally moved off last year.

I shopped around and landed on Hetzner's Ashburn US servers. For what I was deploying (a few dozen websites, containers, some relatively complex .NET SaaS apps, some automated scripts, etc.), the pricing on Azure just wasn't competitive. But worse for me was the complexity: I found that using Azure encouraged me to introduce more and more complex deployment pipelines, when all I really needed was "Build the container -> SCP it into a blue/green deployment scheme on a VPS -> flip a switch after testing it".

No love for Gcore Labs? They're seemingly completely unknown but their free DNS product is rock solid. They also have a FaaS platform I've never gotten around to trying

I've posted this a couple times before when EU tech + Hetzner comes up (and probably will again):

Good list but the biggest missing piece for most new SaaS products right now is AI/LLM APIs. If you're building anything with AI features you're calling OpenAI, Anthropic, or similar - all US. Mistral exists but the ecosystem around it is much thinner. That's probably the hardest US dependency to drop in 2026 that I can think of.

Plausible is a great pick though, been using it and it covers most of what you'd want from analytics unless you need GA/GTM tied to ad campaigns.

It's worth considering why you are choosing a European stack.

Is it to support local/European companies - Great. Is it because you don't want to be at risk of the US and the CLOUD Act - Not so great. Any company that has servers in the US (which Hetzner and basically all CDNs do) are still vulnerable to the CLOUD Act and that includes servers in Europe.

Competition is good.

Having a global monopoly on these kinds of things is part of what has let U.S. companies get away with being so anti-consumer for so long.

Might also want to add Codeberg and Tangled for EU-hosted code forges.

Mollie itself is hosted on GCP: https://cloud.google.com/customers/mollie

Might want to add ClouDNS for DNS management (based in EU).

Why not add Adyen for payments?

The EU providers are simply not on par with AWS, CloudFlare, GCP, etc.

Yes, you can get cheap servers but then you've to self-host and manage a bunch of services that you could get for pennies on the dollar in AWS.

There are hundreds of datacenter providers and yet, most are absolute garbage when it comes to customer support, problem resolution, you get really old hardware, many times you have to send an email and wait weeks because they don't have a self-service UI, SLA is a joke, etc.

You can do it, it's just gonna be a nightmare and you'll spend more time/money on it.

Indeed Azure & AWS use complexity (e.g. their terrible docs) and convoluted non-standard terminology, approaches and non-interop to keep developers in their platform silo and competitors, who provide the same advantages with better DX and less complexity, away from their money cows.

Yeah. Azure is such a weird platform for not actually having a competitive way to just cheaply deploy a simple .NET app, it's a weird design decision.

You get dragged into "Container instances" when then require "Azure Container Registry" or something else that is never really clear what you're getting and how much it'll cost.

I run one thing using the free allowance, but for everything else I just rent a cheap VPS elsewhere.

Competition is good.

Having a global monopoly on these kinds of things is part of what has let U.S. companies get away with being so anti-consumer for so long.

Might also want to add Codeberg and Tangled for EU-hosted code forges.

Mollie itself is hosted on GCP: https://cloud.google.com/customers/mollie

Why not add Adyen for payments?

Yeah. Azure is such a weird platform for not actually having a competitive way to just cheaply deploy a simple .NET app, it's a weird design decision.

You get dragged into "Container instances" when then require "Azure Container Registry" or something else that is never really clear what you're getting and how much it'll cost.

I run one thing using the free allowance, but for everything else I just rent a cheap VPS elsewhere.

Plausible is a great pick though, been using it and it covers most of what you'd want from analytics unless you need GA/GTM tied to ad campaigns.

I’d say open models are catching up to proprietary ones quite quickly, and those open models can be hosted on European infrastructure [1]. Some have direct model as a service apis, and others offer dedicated hosting for whichever model you choose to use. Qwen 3.5-397b-a17b and now Minimax M2.7 are two very strong contenders.

[1] https://www.scaleway.com/en/docs/generative-apis/reference-c...

Apparently AWS's European Sovereign Cloud has Bedrock, so that could be an option.

What are some useful ways SaaS companies are using AI? Great way to axe your customer support team.

I don't understand this statement at all. The OpenAI API is a standard which works against any number of models hosted by a whole pile of providers and the open weight models from Chinese labs are available from providers that aren't on US soil and likely ones in the EU, or you could just pay the $$ and host vLLM on your own GPU. Many of them (K2.5 the Minimax, the GLM models, the Qwen 3.6 models) are about as capable as frontier US models from about 4 months ago or so.

Unless you're trying to run a frontier coding agent at Codex/Claude Code levels, that's not a hard blank to fill right now.

It's worth considering why you are choosing a European stack.

That doesn't sound right. https://docs.hetzner.com/general/company-and-policy/data-pro...

If you spin up your servers in EU locations they are under German ownership and EU regulation. Others, such as those in the US, are owned by a subsidiary and those are subject separately on the Cloud Act. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Might want to add ClouDNS for DNS management (based in EU).

I think they’re looking for companies to advertise[0] rather than purely being a neutral resource.

Which is fine, but I don’t imagine they’ll list a company that hasn’t paid for it.

[0]: https://eualternative.eu/advertise/

ICANN as no European equivalent though.

The EU providers are simply not on par with AWS, CloudFlare, GCP, etc.

Yes, you can get cheap servers but then you've to self-host and manage a bunch of services that you could get for pennies on the dollar in AWS.

You can do it, it's just gonna be a nightmare and you'll spend more time/money on it.

This might be true for some type of companies but in general it's absolutely not true. Not in my experience anyway.

Check out Scaleway (France). They have by far the broadest range of managed services with full permissions/IAM integration etc. - it is the closest EU match to AWS. Yes, if your entire existing setup depends on once specialized AWS service (i.e. DynamoDB) you still will need to go with AWS, but when building from scratch it's a different story.

[1] https://www.scaleway.com/en/docs/generative-apis/reference-c...

ICANN as no European equivalent though.

This might be true for some type of companies but in general it's absolutely not true. Not in my experience anyway.

Apparently AWS's European Sovereign Cloud has Bedrock, so that could be an option.

The AWS Sovereign Cloud is still owned 100% by Amazon Inc. in the US. Not saying that rules it out for all use cases, but something that should be mentioned. "Sovereignty" is a somewhat vague term.

<American Company> European means nothing. They are all subject to the US Cloud Act, and the moment you start using their services, it inevitably has one or two services that end up contacting us-east-1 anyways. And that's without taking into account that they are all trying to fuck you over from.behind anyways as they sign data exchange agreements between Europe and the US.

The large US players are not an option if you want your data safe from the US.

What are some useful ways SaaS companies are using AI? Great way to axe your customer support team.

I don't know about useful, but the most visible one is copywriting. Even when there's a human involved, every startup/small org I know runs content through them. (And that includes this article.) It's definitely something that companies want even if they don't necessarily need it (like analytics).

By far the best AI+human customer support mechanism I've experienced is through SMS/messages. They support auth, they're asynchronous, there's no app or custom interface to timeout, it's easy to send complex queries as text and you have the log right there. Apple does this really well. Delta also does, surprisingly, because their AI phone bot is garbage. It's also presumably easier for the human agents to multi-task.

Great ways to get buzzwords on your investor slides!

In Xero for example I can search for invoices or contacts in a much slower and more cumbersome fashion in the new AI tool than I can with the old search field!

Oh, you mean a useful way, never mind.

Unless you're trying to run a frontier coding agent at Codex/Claude Code levels, that's not a hard blank to fill right now.

Fair point on open models + EU hosting, that's a much better option than I gave it credit for. I was thinking more about the "just plug in an API key and go" experience where OpenAI/Anthropic are still way ahead, but yeah if you're willing to do the work the gap is closing fast.

That doesn't sound right. https://docs.hetzner.com/general/company-and-policy/data-pro...

Do you really think German intelligence authorities don’t do what the US asks them to do?

I think they’re looking for companies to advertise[0] rather than purely being a neutral resource.

Which is fine, but I don’t imagine they’ll list a company that hasn’t paid for it.

[0]: https://eualternative.eu/advertise/

I don't get that impression from that page. It definitely doesn't say you can't buy a tailored recommendation list to promote your product specifically, but I don't believe all of the listed products have paid for their existence on the site (for now. That might be the end goal though.)

The best bit:

> A subtle, high-visibility banner

The AWS Sovereign Cloud is still owned 100% by Amazon Inc. in the US. Not saying that rules it out for all use cases, but something that should be mentioned. "Sovereignty" is a somewhat vague term.

In Xero for example I can search for invoices or contacts in a much slower and more cumbersome fashion in the new AI tool than I can with the old search field!

Oh, you mean a useful way, never mind.

The best bit:

> A subtle, high-visibility banner

The large US players are not an option if you want your data safe from the US.

I haven't looked into the details but I remember from the announcement that the EU cloud is owned specifically by an EU entity headed by EU citizens. There would be no point spinning up a 'sovereign cloud' beholden to the US.

Great ways to get buzzwords on your investor slides!

I make a point of describing things written conventionally as "not using artificial intelligence, just using good old-fashioned reliable analogue stupidity".

Openrouter gives you exactly what you want and your choice of a huge number of models.

Do you really think German intelligence authorities don’t do what the US asks them to do?

That is not the CLOUD act, that is shifting the goalpost to some sort of defeatist helplessness.

Openrouter gives you exactly what you want and your choice of a huge number of models.

That is not the CLOUD act, that is shifting the goalpost to some sort of defeatist helplessness.

I make a point of describing things written conventionally as "not using artificial intelligence, just using good old-fashioned reliable analogue stupidity".

I mostly meant getting to call your product barely used AI toilet paper instead of just barely used toilet paper.

Can you build a SaaS without AWS?

Building a SaaS product from scratch in 2026 without touching AWS, Azure, or GCP. Without Stripe, without Cloudflare, without Google Analytics. Is it actually possible? And more importantly, is it practical?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that the EU software ecosystem has reached a point where every core layer of a SaaS stack has at least one credible European option. Some are mature and battle-tested, others are newer but capable. In this guide, we walk through each layer and recommend specific providers we think are worth considering.

Hosting and compute

This is the foundation of your stack, and the layer where EU options are strongest. Two providers stand out, depending on your priorities.

If you are comfortable with Linux, Hetzner is hard to beat on price-performance. Clean API, straightforward servers, pricing at a fraction of AWS. You handle more infrastructure yourself, but if your team has ops experience, the savings are significant. Data centers in Germany and Finland.

If you want managed services closer to the AWS experience, Scaleway is the pick. Managed Kubernetes, databases, object storage, serverless functions, and GPU instances. Not the cheapest, but it reduces your operational burden significantly. Data centers in Paris, Amsterdam, and Warsaw.

Billing and payments

If you have used Stripe before, Mollie is the closest thing to that experience in the EU. Clean API, good documentation, fast onboarding. They support all the major European payment methods out of the box (iDEAL, Bancontact, SEPA, Klarna, credit cards), which is something you will appreciate when selling across multiple EU countries. Mollie is based in Amsterdam and processes payments through EU infrastructure.

The integration pattern is familiar: create a payment, redirect the customer, handle the webhook. If you have built a Stripe integration before, you will feel at home. Subscription billing, recurring payments, and multi-currency support are all there.

CDN

Bunny.net does everything you need from a CDN, at a price that makes Cloudflare's paid tiers look expensive. They have a global network of PoPs, edge storage, image optimization, a video delivery platform, and DDoS protection. The dashboard is straightforward, the API is well-documented, and the pricing is purely usage-based with no surprise tiers.

If you are running a SaaS, you probably need a CDN for static assets, maybe image transformation, and possibly video delivery. Bunny.net covers all of that. Based in Slovenia, EU-owned and operated.

Analytics

You do not need Google Analytics. You probably do not even want it, given the cookie consent headaches it creates. Two EU options stand out.

Plausible is the cozy, privacy-friendly option. No cookies, no consent banner needed, GDPR-compliant out of the box. Simple dashboard with the metrics that matter. Open source, based in Estonia.

Simple Analytics is worth a look if you are just getting started, as they offer a free plan that covers the basics. Similar philosophy to Plausible: privacy-first, no cookies, lightweight script. Based in the Netherlands.

Transactional email

Password resets, welcome emails, invoices. Every SaaS needs transactional email, and you do not need SendGrid for it. Three EU providers all offer free tiers that are generous enough to get you through the early stages.

Ahasend (Netherlands) offers 1,000 emails per month for free and is focused purely on transactional email with a developer-first API. Lettermint (Netherlands) gives you 300 emails per month on their free plan and keeps things simple. MailerLite (Lithuania) is broader, covering both transactional and marketing email, with 500 emails per month on the free tier.

All three support SMTP relay, so if you are migrating from another provider, you can often just swap credentials. REST APIs are available too.

Yes, you can build on a 100% EU stack

A few years ago, building a SaaS on entirely European infrastructure meant real compromises. Today, the picture is different. Every core layer of a modern SaaS stack has at least one production-ready EU option.

The stack we outlined here (Hetzner or Scaleway for compute, Mollie for payments, Bunny.net for CDN, Plausible for analytics, and Ahasend or Lettermint for email) is not a theoretical exercise. These are real products used by real companies in production. The total cost is competitive with, and often lower than, an equivalent US-based stack.

You will not find an EU equivalent for every niche AWS service. If you need something like DynamoDB, SQS, or Cognito, you will either self-host an open source alternative or accept a gap. But for the vast majority of SaaS applications, the foundation is solid.

The practical benefit goes beyond sovereignty. Simpler GDPR compliance, no cookie consent headaches for analytics, payments that support European methods natively, and support teams in your timezone. Building on an EU stack in 2026 is not an ideological statement. It is just a practical choice that happens to be viable now.

For most SaaS workloads, an EU stack is comparable or cheaper. Hetzner's pricing is significantly lower than AWS EC2. Mollie's transaction fees are competitive with Stripe. The main cost difference is operational: if you choose Hetzner over Scaleway, you trade lower hosting costs for more hands-on infrastructure work.

EU providers generally use more open standards than the US hyperscalers. Hetzner and Scaleway both use standard Linux VMs and Kubernetes. Mollie's API is straightforward to swap if needed. The lock-in risk is actually lower than with AWS-specific services like Lambda, DynamoDB, or SQS. And because you are building on standard, interchangeable pieces rather than one monolithic platform, you can swap out any layer of the stack independently without rebuilding everything.

Hetzner and Scaleway both serve companies with significant traffic. Bunny.net handles billions of requests. The stack described here is not just for side projects. If you get to a million users signing up, EU cloud limitations will be far down your list of problems to solve.

Hacker Times