Cloud Bill for a 300-User Business App: OVH vs Scaleway vs AWS (2026)

The verdict in three sentences

For a 300-user business application, the same workload usually costs EUR 80 to 400 a month on OVH or Scaleway and EUR 150 to 900 on AWS, a gap of 1.5 to 2.5 times. Yet the hosting bill weighs less than managed operations (EUR 300 to 1,200 a month) and the overlooked lines: backups, monitoring, egress traffic. The right choice depends on your application profile and your data sovereignty constraints, not on the provider's brand.

Three application profiles, three bills

300 users does not mean the same load for everyone. An order-entry tool used 20 minutes a day consumes ten times less than a reporting application that recalculates dashboards every hour. Here are 2026 orders of magnitude, excluding VAT, for a production environment with a managed database in a European region:

The AWS gap comes from per-resource pricing (RDS managed database, load balancer, egress, CloudWatch logs all billed separately). In return, AWS offers a depth of managed services the European providers do not yet match, useful if your roadmap includes AI workloads, large-scale queues or several global regions.

The lines the invoice does not show

The servers line is rarely what blows the budget. The services around it matter more, and above all human time.

A company that saves EUR 300 a month moving from AWS to Scaleway but pays EUR 1,200 for poorly scoped managed services has gained nothing. Start by measuring actual consumption over 3 months (CPU, memory, storage, traffic) before comparing offers.

Data sovereignty: a criterion that changes the choice

OVHcloud and Scaleway are French companies under European law. AWS can host your data in Paris or Frankfurt, but remains a US company subject to the CLOUD Act. For an application handling health data, sensitive HR data or public contracts, the difference matters:

• Health data: in France a HDS-certified host is mandatory. OVHcloud, Scaleway and AWS all hold it, but some public buyers require a European provider.
• SecNumCloud qualification: required by some French ministries and critical operators, it covers part of the OVHcloud offering, not standard AWS services.
• Portability: a containerised app (Docker, Kubernetes) with a standard PostgreSQL database moves between providers in 2 to 4 weeks. An app built on proprietary AWS services (Lambda, DynamoDB) needs 2 to 4 months.

That last point is a reason to demand a portable architecture from day one when you commission a custom web application. At Kolonell, application maintenance follows the grid of 35,000, 75,000 or 120,000 FCFA per month (53, 114 or 183 EUR); hosting and managed operations are quoted case by case depending on the provider chosen.

Mini case study

Claire is CFO of an industrial maintenance company in Nantes. Its field-service app serves 300 technicians and sales staff. The AWS bill reaches EUR 780 a month, plus EUR 900 of managed services, for EUR 1,680 a month and EUR 20,160 a year.

The consumption audit reveals an oversized database (18% utilisation), a test environment running 24/7 and EUR 240 a month of logs kept indefinitely.

• AWS optimisation: database downsized one tier, test switched off at night and weekends, logs capped at 30 days. Bill: EUR 430 a month.
• Migration to Scaleway: EUR 260 a month, plus a one-off migration project of EUR 6,000.
• Managed services renegotiated on a clear scope: EUR 600 a month.

Scaleway scenario: (260 + 600) × 12 = EUR 10,320 a year, a saving of EUR 9,840 a year. Migration payback: 6,000 ÷ (9,840 ÷ 12) = 7.3 months. The optimised AWS scenario already saves EUR 7,800 a year without migrating, and is often the right first step.

FAQ

What does hosting a 300-user application really cost? As a 2026 order of magnitude, budget EUR 80 to 400 a month on OVH or Scaleway and EUR 150 to 900 on AWS depending on the profile. Add EUR 300 to 1,200 of managed services if nobody in-house runs the servers.

Is AWS always more expensive? For the same load, AWS usually costs 1.5 to 2.5 times more. Savings Plans or reserved instances over 1 or 3 years cut the gap by 30 to 40%, but lock you in.

Do we need high availability across two zones? Only if one hour of downtime costs you more than the annual premium, typically 40 to 80% on top of the bill. For an internal app used during office hours, a tested backup and a 4-hour recovery target are often enough.

How long does a provider migration take? For a containerised app with PostgreSQL, 2 to 4 weeks, including one week of testing and an overnight cutover. For an app tied to proprietary services, allow 2 to 4 months.

What is the first step to cut the bill? Measure 3 months of real consumption and switch off what is idle: out-of-hours test environments often represent 15 to 25% of the bill.

Let's scope your project. Share your cloud invoice and application architecture, and within 2 weeks we will show the achievable savings and any migration plan. Detailed quote within 48 h. WhatsApp +221 77 596 93 33.