Alibaba Cloud
Ranked 8 of 10 cloud providers by recommenders
People recommend it as a comparable alternative to AWS, GCP and Azure with a broad set of services. Critics most often raise Chinese data law, prompt retention and sign-up friction.
People recommend it as a comparable alternative to AWS, GCP and Azure with a broad set of services. Critics most often raise Chinese data law, prompt retention and sign-up friction.
21 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 13
- approval share
- 38%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Comparable to AWS, GCP and Azure
“they're pretty close in services and offerings to what AWS, GCP and Azure provides”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “The US Is Winning the AI Race” “alibaba cloud have a similar solution”
Comment from 26 Mar 2026 in “From zero to a RAG system: successes and failures” Impressive, strong service range
“Alibaba has impressive looking services”
Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native” “Alibaba is excellent top-5 easily.”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “The US Is Winning the AI Race” Easy to use, few problems
“I think it's quite user-friendly”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: Which cloud provider do you like best and why?” “Not a single problem at all.”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “US holds off blacklisting China's DeepSeek, +100 firms deemed security risks”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Chinese law and data retention concerns
“they retain prompts for an unknown period. So they might not explicitly use your data for training, but they do store it indefinitely on their servers”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft's MAI-Code-1-Flash Scores 51% SWE-Bench Pro with Just 5B Active Params” “It'll be held to Chinese data standards and law. Keep that in mind.”
Comment from 3 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: European alternatives to Google, Apple, Dropbox and 120 US apps” “the internet law in china is very restrictive”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “I Moved My Digital Stack to Europe” Account setup and sign-up friction
“Alibaba Cloud requires account setup and only offers meaningful discounts at enterprise volume.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 on Hacker News “the amount of steps from creating an account made me stop, it was too much”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Qwen3-Max-Thinking” “Alibaba Cloud has too much friction for me.”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork” Expensive with no spending caps
“they are expensive, can easily hit 200 USD / 3 days which do not count towards your membership”
Comment from 19 Jul 2026 in “Qwen 3.8 Max Preview” “They have no caps. This was the reason to cancel my account there.”
Comment from 30 May 2026 in “OpenRouter raises $113M Series B” Banned in India and some networks
“I banned Alibaba's Cloud two years ago and it still hits one of my domains 1 million times per day”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “I posted to HN, and then my website was flooded with AI bot traffic” “India has quite literally banned Alibaba Cloud and related.”
Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Manus will return to operating as an independent company”
Other cloud providers people recommend
The four most recommended other cloud providers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) | 248 | 498 | 33% | 13 | 5 yrs17 owners | — |
| Google Cloud | 161 | 403 | 29% | 12 | 9 yrs13 owners | — |
| Microsoft Azure | 153 | 608 | 20% | 12 | 8 yrs10 owners | — |
| Scaleway | 70 | 26 | 73% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Alibaba CloudThis page | 8 | 13 | 38% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
21 of the 22 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“AWS, Azure, GCE, Alibaba Cloud - all the same crap, different names and slightly different jenga towers.”
“I banned Alibaba's Cloud two years ago and it still hits one of my domains 1 million times per day”
“India has quite literally banned Alibaba Cloud and related.”
“It's full of information everywhere but never what you need”
“i'm just getting endless timeouts”
“Alibaba Cloud has too much friction for me.”
“they are expensive, can easily hit 200 USD / 3 days which do not count towards your membership”
“Not a single problem at all.”
“they retain prompts for an unknown period. So they might not explicitly use your data for training, but they do store it indefinitely on their servers”
“They have no caps. This was the reason to cancel my account there.”
“Alibaba is excellent top-5 easily.”
“the internet law in china is very restrictive”
“they're pretty close in services and offerings to what AWS, GCP and Azure provides”
“Alibaba Cloud requires account setup and only offers meaningful discounts at enterprise volume.”
“It'll be held to Chinese data standards and law. Keep that in mind.”
“I can't imagine moving from qwen local to qwen alibaba after not choosing google/anthropic/openai”
“From a pragmatic perspective it's much better for (outcomes related to) privacy.”
“alibaba cloud have a similar solution”
“Alibaba has impressive looking services”
“the amount of steps from creating an account made me stop, it was too much”
“I think it's quite user-friendly”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.