The best cloud providers, according to hackers
10 cloud providers were recommended on Hacker News between November 2025 and November 2026. We rank them by how many separate people recommend each one, and 2 earn the Hacker Approved badge.
Top picks
The two most recommended cloud providers with the badge. Each figure is 5 people. RecommendsCriticizes One comment
European provider for EU hosting
Recommended as a European cloud host with self-serve compute, broad managed services and pricing below AWS and GCP. Critics cite weak support and website, reliability doubts and high costs for steady workloads.
European alternative to US providers
Recommended for cheap, fast servers and VMs and as a non-US cloud option; critics note US cloud act exposure.
All 10 cloud providers, ranked
Select a column heading to sort. Approval share is recommenders out of everyone who gave an opinion; the tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs. Months counts the months, out of 13, in which someone recommended it.
| Rank | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amazon Web Services (AWS) | 248 | 498 | 33% | 13 | 5 yrs17 owners | — |
| 2 | Google Cloud | 161 | 403 | 29% | 12 | 9 yrs13 owners | — |
| 3 | Microsoft Azure | 153 | 608 | 20% | 12 | 8 yrs10 owners | — |
| Tied 4 | Scaleway | 70 | 26 | 73% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Tied 4 | Oracle Cloud Free Tier | 70 | 99 | 41% | 12 | 3 yrs16 owners | — |
| 6 | OVHcloud | 16 | 8 | 67% | 9 | — | Approved |
| 7 | Google Cloud Platform | 12 | 27 | 31% | 7 | — | — |
| 8 | Alibaba Cloud | 8 | 13 | 38% | 7 | — | — |
| 9 | STACKIT cloud | 6 | 6 | 50% | 4 | — | — |
| 10 | Ubicloud | 5 | 2 | 71% | 4 | 6 mo3 owners | — |
How we rank
Rank is the number of separate people who recommend a product in a Hacker News comment over the past year. Someone who praises the same cloud provider in five threads counts once.
The badge goes to cloud providers that at least 10 people recommend, with recommenders outnumbering critics at least 2 to 1, recommended in at least 4 of the 13 months.
Rankings are never for sale. We may earn a commission when you buy through our links. It never changes the order.