GCP → European cloud

Migrating from GCP to a European cloud

Leaving GCP for a sovereign European cloud is usually a multi-provider move: compute and Kubernetes go to Scaleway or OVHcloud, but the two services that most often anchor a GCP estate (BigQuery and Spanner) have no EU-sovereign managed twin at all. That inversion is the whole planning problem: the parts you leaned on most are the parts hardest to leave. This page names which GCP services move cleanly and which force a re-platform.

Which GCP services have a true EU equivalent?

Graded conservatively against the EU-sovereign option that exists in production today, across providers.

GCP services and their EU-sovereign equivalents, each with a migration verdict.
GCPEU-sovereignVerdict
Google Cloud StorageScaleway / OVHcloud Object Storage S3-compatible object storage; GCS access repoints by endpoint and SDK.Equivalent
Persistent DiskScaleway / OVHcloud Block Storage Network block volumes with snapshots. Direct equivalent.Equivalent
Compute EngineScaleway / OVHcloud / Hetzner instances General-purpose and GPU instances are a solved problem across EU providers.Equivalent
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)Scaleway Kapsule / OVHcloud MKS CNCF-conformant managed control planes; portable manifests move with little friction.Equivalent
Cloud SQLScaleway / OVHcloud Managed PostgreSQL Managed PostgreSQL is well served; there is no AlloyDB-equivalent for its Postgres-compatible acceleration.Partial
Cloud RunScaleway Serverless Containers Scale-to-zero container hosting exists for request-driven workloads; the surrounding ecosystem is thinner.Partial
Cloud Pub/SubScaleway Messaging & Queuing / NATS Managed queue/pub-sub exists, but Pub/Sub’s exact delivery semantics are re-tested, not assumed.Partial
BigQueryNo managed twin (self-host ClickHouse / Aiven) No EU-sovereign serverless warehouse. ClickHouse is fast but a different operating model, not a drop-in.No managed twin
Cloud SpannerNo managed twin No managed globally-distributed, externally-consistent SQL twin. Often the single hardest service to leave.No managed twin
Firestore / BigtableNo managed twin (self-host ScyllaDB) No managed serverless NoSQL twin; you run ScyllaDB/Cassandra.No managed twin
Vertex AINo managed twin (OVHcloud AI / Scaleway GPU) GPU, training and inference exist, but no one platform matches Vertex AI end to end. You assemble it.No managed twin

Where do the GCP APIs actually diverge?

The commodity layer repoints. These are the GCP-specific services with no sovereign twin. Plan the estate around them.

  • BigQuery has no EU-sovereign managed twin: its serverless, separated-storage-and-compute warehouse retargets to ClickHouse (self-hosted or via Aiven), a fast but different operating model.
  • Cloud Spanner’s globally-distributed, externally-consistent SQL has no managed European equivalent at all. This is often the single hardest service to leave.
  • Firestore/Bigtable and Vertex AI have no drop-in: NoSQL moves to ScyllaDB, and end-to-end ML is assembled from OVHcloud AI or Scaleway GPU + Managed Inference rather than one platform.
  • Pub/Sub retargets to Scaleway Messaging or NATS; delivery guarantees are re-tested rather than assumed.

Which of your GCP services move cleanly?

21 capabilities

  • Object storage

    Hyperscaler Amazon S3 Azure Blob Storage Google Cloud Storage
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway Object StorageOVHcloud Object Storage
    Verdict Mature

    S3-compatible API. A drop-in target for most SDKs, backups and static assets.

  • Block storage

    Hyperscaler Amazon EBS Azure Managed Disks Persistent Disk / Hyperdisk
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway Block StorageOVHcloud Block Storage
    Verdict Mature

    Network block volumes with snapshots. Standard building block, well covered.

  • Virtual machines

    Hyperscaler Amazon EC2 Azure Virtual Machines Google Compute Engine
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway InstancesOVHcloud Public CloudHetzner Cloud
    Verdict Mature

    General-purpose and dedicated instances are a solved problem in the EU.

  • Managed Kubernetes

    Hyperscaler Amazon EKS Azure AKS Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway KapsuleOVHcloud Managed Kubernetes
    Verdict Mature

    CNCF-conformant managed control planes. Portable workloads move with little friction.

  • Container registry

    Hyperscaler Amazon ECR Azure Container Registry Google Artifact Registry
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway Container RegistryOVHcloud Managed Private RegistryHarbor (self-hosted)
    Verdict Mature

    OCI registries are commodity. Self-hosted Harbor is a fully sovereign fallback.

  • Managed PostgreSQL

    Hyperscaler Amazon RDS / Aurora Azure Database for PostgreSQL Cloud SQL / AlloyDB for PostgreSQL
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway Managed DatabaseOVHcloud Managed DatabasesAiven for PostgreSQL
    Verdict Viable

    Standard PostgreSQL is well served. Aurora-specific features (e.g. global database, serverless v2 autoscaling) have no exact twin, so plan around them.

  • Managed cache (Redis/Valkey)

    Hyperscaler Amazon ElastiCache Azure Cache for Redis Memorystore for Redis
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway Managed Database for RedisAiven for Valkey/Redis
    Verdict Viable

    In-memory caching is well covered; Valkey is the emerging open successor to Redis.

  • Message queue / pub-sub

    Hyperscaler Amazon SQS / SNS Azure Service Bus Google Cloud Pub/Sub
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway Messaging & QueuingSelf-hosted NATS / RabbitMQ
    Verdict Viable

    Scaleway offers SQS/SNS-compatible endpoints; self-hosted NATS covers the rest.

  • Event streaming (Kafka)

    Hyperscaler Amazon MSK / Kinesis Azure Event Hubs Managed Service for Apache Kafka
    EU-sovereign path Aiven for Apache KafkaSelf-hosted Kafka / Redpanda
    Verdict Viable

    Aiven runs managed Kafka in EU regions. Kinesis's exact API is not replicated, so target Kafka.

  • Authoritative DNS

    Hyperscaler Amazon Route 53 Azure DNS Google Cloud DNS
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway Domains & DNSOVHcloud DNSBunny DNS
    Verdict Viable

    Managed authoritative DNS is well covered. Route 53's routing policies need a manual rebuild.

  • Transactional email

    Hyperscaler Amazon SES Azure Communication Services No first-party service (SendGrid via Marketplace)
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway Transactional EmailBrevo (FR)
    Verdict Viable

    Scaleway TEM and Brevo (French) cover sending, reputation and analytics from the EU.

  • Secrets & key management

    Hyperscaler AWS Secrets Manager / KMS Azure Key Vault Secret Manager / Cloud KMS
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway Secret ManagerHashiCorp Vault (self-hosted)
    Verdict Viable

    Managed secret storage exists; self-hosted Vault gives full control including HSM-backed keys.

  • Application platform (PaaS)

    Hyperscaler AWS App Runner / Elastic Beanstalk Azure App Service Google App Engine
    EU-sovereign path Clever Cloud (FR)Scalingo (FR)
    Verdict Viable

    Clever Cloud is a production-proven French PaaS (Nantes): git-push or container deploys, autoscaling and managed add-ons (PostgreSQL, Redis, and more). A sovereign home for web apps, though narrower than App Engine’s wider service ecosystem.

  • Serverless containers

    Hyperscaler AWS Fargate Azure Container Instances Google Cloud Run
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway Serverless Containers
    Verdict Viable

    Scale-to-zero container hosting exists and is production-ready for request-driven workloads.

  • Customer identity (CIAM)

    Hyperscaler Amazon Cognito Azure AD B2C Google Cloud Identity Platform
    EU-sovereign path Keycloak (self-hosted)ZitadelOry
    Verdict Viable

    No managed Cognito clone, but self-hosted Keycloak and EU-based Zitadel are mature and widely run.

  • Serverless functions (FaaS)

    Hyperscaler AWS Lambda Azure Functions Cloud Run functions (Cloud Functions)
    EU-sovereign path Scaleway Serverless FunctionsOVHcloud Functions
    Verdict Partial

    The runtimes exist, but Lambda's breadth of native event sources and mature cold-start tuning is not matched. Fine for HTTP and cron; harder for deep event-driven fan-out.

  • Global CDN & edge compute

    Hyperscaler Amazon CloudFront / Lambda@Edge Azure Front Door Cloud CDN / Media CDN
    EU-sovereign path Bunny.netGcoreOVHcloud CDN
    Verdict Partial

    EU-headquartered CDNs deliver content well globally. Edge-compute primitives (equiv. to Lambda@Edge/CloudFront Functions) are thinner and less mature.

  • Metrics, logs & traces

    Hyperscaler Amazon CloudWatch / X-Ray Azure Monitor Cloud Monitoring / Logging / Trace
    EU-sovereign path Self-hosted Grafana / Prometheus / Loki / Tempo
    Verdict Partial

    The open-source LGTM stack matches the managed incumbents feature for feature, but you run it yourself. A fully managed, EU-sovereign one-stop observability suite is thin on the ground.

  • Managed ML platform

    Hyperscaler Amazon SageMaker Azure Machine Learning Vertex AI
    EU-sovereign path OVHcloud AI Endpoints / AI TrainingScaleway GPU Instances + Managed Inference
    Verdict Gap

    GPU compute, training and inference endpoints exist, but nothing matches SageMaker's end-to-end breadth (pipelines, feature store, model registry, tuning) as one managed platform. You assemble it.

  • Cloud data warehouse

    Hyperscaler Amazon Redshift Azure Synapse Google BigQuery
    EU-sovereign path ClickHouse (self-hosted)Aiven for ClickHouse
    Verdict Gap

    There is no EU-sovereign, fully managed columnar warehouse with the convenience of Redshift or BigQuery. ClickHouse (self-hosted or via Aiven) is excellent and fast, but it is a different operating model, not a drop-in.

  • Serverless wide-column NoSQL

    Hyperscaler Amazon DynamoDB Azure Cosmos DB Cloud Bigtable / Firestore
    EU-sovereign path ScyllaDB (self-hosted)Self-hosted CassandraFerretDB / MongoDB-compatible
    Verdict Gap

    DynamoDB's serverless billing and single-digit-ms scale have no EU-sovereign managed equivalent. ScyllaDB/Cassandra deliver the performance, but you run the cluster and lose the pay-per-request model.

Verdicts are conservative and reflect managed, EU-jurisdiction offerings as of 2026. Provider feature sets move quickly, so we re-check on every engagement.

How many engineer-days does this take?

50–120 engineer-days

Higher than a like-for-like AWS→EU move, because the GCP anchors (BigQuery, Spanner) are re-platforms, and the target is usually more than one provider.

  • A mid-sized GCP estate: GKE, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, a BigQuery warehouse and Pub/Sub messaging.
  • The low end assumes a GKE-, GCS- and Cloud SQL-shaped estate with light analytics.
  • The high end assumes a BigQuery warehouse to rebuild on ClickHouse and/or a Spanner dependency to re-architect onto partitioned PostgreSQL.
  • Excludes application rewrites, egress from GCP and the integration overhead of a multi-provider target.

Where would this actually run?

A sovereign target is usually spread across EU providers’ regions. Pick the mix that matches your data-residency and latency needs.

  • FranceScaleway Paris; OVHcloud Gravelines and Strasbourg.
  • GermanyOVHcloud Frankfurt; STACKIT (Heilbronn); Hetzner Falkenstein/Nuremberg.
  • NetherlandsScaleway Amsterdam.
  • PolandScaleway and OVHcloud Warsaw.
  • FinlandHetzner Helsinki.

What are the honest limitations?

  • BigQuery and Spanner have no sovereign twin The two services most likely to anchor a GCP estate are exactly the hardest to leave: BigQuery becomes self-hosted ClickHouse, and Spanner has no managed European equivalent at all.
  • A multi-provider target You typically trade GCP’s single control plane for several (compute on one provider, warehouse self-hosted, ML on another) and own the integration, identity federation and billing spread.

What else does a CTO ask before committing?

What is the hardest part of leaving GCP specifically?
BigQuery and Spanner. Everything on the commodity layer (GKE, Cloud Storage, Compute Engine, Cloud SQL) has a solid EU equivalent. But BigQuery has no sovereign serverless-warehouse twin, and Spanner’s globally-consistent SQL has no managed European equivalent at all. Scope those two first.
Do we have to pick a single European provider?
Rarely. The pragmatic target is multi-provider: compute and Kubernetes on Scaleway or OVHcloud, a self-hosted ClickHouse for analytics, and a GPU/inference stack for ML. That buys the best fit per workload at the cost of integrating several control planes.
How do we replace Vertex AI?
You assemble it. OVHcloud AI (Training, Endpoints) and Scaleway GPU Instances plus Managed Inference cover the compute and serving, but the end-to-end MLOps surface (pipelines, feature store, model registry) is stitched from open-source components rather than one managed platform.