France cloud provider scalaway has great prices. In some services they are cheaper then AWS. So I think that devs just need to research a bit more.

Also Hetzner (germany) is super cheap when compared with US hosting providers.

But those do exist and they are generally a lot cheaper; not more expensive.

BTW. it's all hosted in the EU if you use it in the EU. Amazon, Google and Azure have data centers all over Europe and using those is not optional for EU based companies. If that wasn't the case, they'd have no business here. Companies legally have to host in the EU and do business with US cloud providers through EU based subsidiaries (mostly based in Ireland. There's a bit of a murky situation with what level of access US intelligence agencies have exactly to all the data or who copies what where and when. But generally, data isn't supposed to leave the continent unless that's needed/required.

I work in Germany. We currently use Google Cloud. It's cheap and convenient enough. Our spend is only 300 euros/month or so. I could replace it. One of our customers insisted on Telekom Cloud; so we support that as well. I've used Hetzner in the past. There are a few other providers. It's not that big of a deal. But it's not a big/urgent issue for us.

However, Vms, object storage, elastic load balancers, managed databases, etc. are all commodities at this point. You don't need to pay AWS 2-3x for that. They aren't magically any better. They certainly aren't any faster. AWS squeezes hard on those VCPUs.

And there's a lot of exotic stuff that some people use. AWS is offering lots of that. But most of those things are a combination of a bit niche and very pricey and more aimed at enterprises than startups. When it comes to GPU hosting, AI stuff, etc. the premium options that Amazon offers really add up really quickly. I'm sure it's fantastic. But many people I talk to in Europe use alternative/cheaper solutions.

For bread and butter hosting, AWS is just expensive and overrated. Big companies don't seem to care much and are sensitive to big brands and the warm fuzzy feeling they get from expensive consultants telling them what to do. And AWS is very good at vendor lock-in. That's also why IBM still exists and why companies like Oracle still do a brisk business separating rich clueless enterprises from their cash. Vendor lock-in is all they have left at this point. But those are at this point the idiot option. AWS is increasingly like that. The times are gone that they are a sane solution for startups. Ten years ago they'd lure you in with "free" hosting for a year and then you'd be hooked for the life time of the startup. But it's not that obvious anymore that is a good choice for cash strapped startups.

Btw. Hetzner now operates in the US. It's a pretty good deal there as well. It's not like you have to give your money to Amazon.

'Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM (now Microsoft)' has been an important factor around my neck of the woods. A cheaper European alternative would never even make it to the comparison. That is changing now though.

What is the cost of storing data in Europe today?

Luckily our friends overseas have shown us the way of dealing with uncompetitive local industries: tariffs.

At Hetzner 4 TB storage (S3 compatible) with 4 TB traffic cost 27.32 Euro/Month.

According to AWS calculator the same 4 TB cost 102 Euro/Month with their standard S3 tier.

So I gladly pay 0.3x to store data in Europe, with a European service.

US services sell your data for additional profit and damp prices. How are you supposed to compete with that?

They certainly will if regulations are part of it.

US has their tariffs and last stage capitalism, we have our government enforcement laws.

Bingo. And for that to happen the EU must be a competitive market. And that doesn’t happen by strangling innovation with a thousand regulations passed down from Brussels by unelected bureaucrats.