Leaving AWS in 2026: where the savings are
Server prices alone rarely justify a move. Bandwidth does. Here's how to tell which side of that line you're on.
By Mark Bradley · 21 October 2026 · Prices checked 22 October 2026
The short answer
For most small and mid-sized businesses, a server on DigitalOcean, Akamai, UpCloud, Vultr, OVHcloud or Hetzner costs less than the same server on AWS, but once AWS is bought sensibly, the gap is smaller than the headlines suggest. What changes the answer is how much data you send to the internet. AWS charges about $0.09 per GB after the first 100 GB a month. Most alternatives include between 1 and 30 TB with each server, and UpCloud and Scaleway don't charge for egress at all.
So the first question isn't “which provider is cheapest?” It's “what does our egress line look like?” You can check yours with our AWS exit savings calculator.
A typical stack, priced
Take a common setup in AWS's us-east-1 region: two servers with 4 vCPUs and 16 GB of memory, a Postgres database with a standby in a second zone, a Redis-compatible cache, a load balancer, a NAT gateway and 1 TB of files in S3. Here is what it costs a month as egress grows, on AWS on-demand, on AWS with every standard discount applied, and on DigitalOcean with a database standby and the files moved to Cloudflare R2.
| Egress per month | AWS on-demand | AWS optimised | DigitalOcean | Saving vs optimised |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 TB | $826 | $621 | $644 | -4% |
| 5 TB | $1,195 | $989 | $644 | 35% |
| 10 TB | $1,656 | $1,450 | $644 | 56% |
List prices in US dollars. “Optimised” means Graviton servers on a 1-year Savings Plan and reserved database and cache instances. At 1 TB, the two are close, and the managed database and cache cost about as much as AWS's reserved ones. At 5 TB, the DigitalOcean bill hasn't moved, while AWS has added hundreds of dollars in egress. The alternative's bill is flat because its servers include the traffic.
Optimise AWS before you compare
Many “we cut our cloud bill by 70%” stories compare an on-demand AWS bill with a discounted alternative. That flatters the move. A fair comparison starts from what AWS would cost if you bought it well:
- Commit for a year. Compute Savings Plans and reserved database instances take roughly a quarter off on-demand prices, with no upfront payment.
- Switch to Graviton. AWS's Arm-based instances cost about 20% less than the Intel equivalents and run most Linux workloads unchanged.
- Remove the hidden lines. NAT gateways, idle public IPv4 addresses ($3.65 a month each), cross-zone traffic, old snapshots and ElastiCache clusters on outdated Redis versions, which carry an Extended Support surcharge of about $92 a month per node.
- Put a CDN in front. Cloudflare doesn't bill for bandwidth, and CloudFront now has flat-rate plans from $15 a month. Either can take most cacheable traffic off your AWS egress bill.
If those steps close most of the gap, stay on AWS and bank the saving. It is faster and carries no migration risk. Our rule of thumb: below a 20% saving against optimised AWS, a migration rarely pays back once the work, running two systems during the move, and risk are counted.
What changed in 2026
- Leaving AWS got cheaper. On 8 October 2026, AWS extended the window for free data transfer out for customers who are leaving to 180 days, up from 60 and then 90. The credit is requested through AWS Support and you don't have to close your account.
- The EU is banning switching charges. Under the EU Data Act, cloud providers may charge only reduced, cost-based fees for switching until 12 January 2027, and nothing after that.
- Hetzner is no longer the automatic answer. Prices rose about 30–37% on 1 April 2026 for existing and new servers. On 15 June, new dedicated-vCPU servers rose by 2.1–2.75 times; the CCX23 went from €31.49 to €85.99 a month. Its US locations include only 1–3 TB of traffic, against 20 TB in Europe.
- OVHcloud raised prices too. Cloud prices rose 9–11% in April, and from 1 October local storage and public IPv4 are billed separately.
- CloudFront got a flat rate. New CloudFront plans start at $15 a month for 50 TB. If most of your egress is cacheable, that alone may fix your bandwidth bill without leaving AWS.
The lesson from the price rises: test any plan against the new provider raising prices by 30% or even 100%. If the saving survives that, it's a sound move. The calculator has this stress test built in.
Where to go instead
North America
DigitalOcean is the closest one-stop replacement, with managed Postgres, Valkey, Kubernetes and load balancers. Akamai (formerly Linode) is a close second, with managed Postgres and Valkey and more transfer per server. Vultr and OVHcloud are cheaper per server; OVHcloud includes traffic and has a data centre in Beauharnois, Quebec, for Canadian data residency. UpCloud has US data centres with no egress fees. Hetzner's US servers are cheap but include only 1–3 TB of traffic, against 20 TB or more in Europe. Canada's own AWS region costs about 10% more than us-east-1, which widens the gap for Canadian companies.
Europe
OVHcloud and Scaleway offer managed Postgres, free Kubernetes control planes and included egress. UpCloud, from Finland, has managed Postgres and Valkey and charges nothing for egress. Hetzner is still cheap for teams that will run their own database, but read the 2026 price changes below first. Most other EU providers lack managed Redis or queues, so teams self-host them or use Upstash or Cloudflare Queues.
Australia and New Zealand
DigitalOcean's 4 vCPU / 16 GB server costs about a third less than AWS's equivalent in Sydney or Auckland. Local price data for most other providers is thin, so we price ANZ moves case by case rather than quote a general figure.
For files and backups, Cloudflare R2 ($15 per TB a month, no egress fees) suits anything you serve to users, while Backblaze B2 ($6.95 per TB) and Wasabi ($7.99 per TB) are cheaper for storage that is mostly written and rarely read. Cloudflare doesn't rent servers, so it isn't an alternative to EC2, but its CDN, R2 and Workers can shrink what is left to host.
When not to move
- Your product depends on AWS-only services such as DynamoDB, Lambda, Step Functions or Cognito. Rewriting them usually costs more than it saves.
- You need a compliance assessment that points to a hyperscaler, such as Canada's Protected B for government work.
- Nobody on your team wants to own a database. Self-run Postgres is cheap until it fails at 3 a.m. Choose a provider with managed databases, or budget for someone to run it.
- Your egress is small and the saving against optimised AWS is under 20%.
Check the numbers yourself
Every price here comes from the providers' own pages, checked 22 October 2026. To price your own setup in detail, use their official calculators:
- AWS Pricing Calculator — Official estimate for any AWS service and region. Estimates can be shared by link.
- Cloudflare R2 pricing calculator — Storage and request costs for R2. Egress is free.
- DigitalOcean pricing calculator — Droplets. Managed Postgres and Valkey prices are on the managed databases pricing page.
- DigitalOcean managed databases pricing
- Hetzner Cloud price calculator — Prices in euros, with and without IPv4.
- Vultr pricing — No official calculator; prices and included bandwidth are listed per plan.
- Hetzner Cloud US locations — Ashburn and Hillsboro prices and included traffic differ from Germany and Finland.
- Akamai Cloud (Linode) pricing — Select a region; a few regions are priced higher.
- UpCloud pricing calculator — Global prices in euros or dollars; no egress fees.
- Scaleway pricing — Hourly prices in euros. Public IPv4 is billed separately.
- OVHcloud Public Cloud prices — No official calculator; hourly and monthly prices are listed per instance.
Questions
Is it cheaper to host on DigitalOcean, Hetzner or OVHcloud than on AWS?
Not always. On server prices alone, a fully optimised AWS bill is close to the alternatives; bandwidth is what opens the gap. For a typical small-business stack in us-east-1 sending 1 TB a month, a DigitalOcean equivalent with a database standby costs $644 a month against $621 on fully optimised AWS: 4% more. At 5 TB a month it is a 35% saving, because AWS charges about $0.09 per GB of egress and the alternatives include several terabytes with each server.
What does it cost to move data out of AWS?
For most customers, nothing. AWS credits data-transfer-out charges for customers who are leaving, requested through AWS Support. Since 8 October 2026, customers outside the EU have 180 days to complete the move, and the move must cover all data in a service, so it helps to migrate whole services at a time. EU customers switch under AWS's EU Data Act terms, and switching charges are banned entirely from 12 January 2027.
When should a business stay on AWS?
When the saving against an optimised AWS bill is under about 20%, when the product depends on AWS-only services like DynamoDB, Lambda or Step Functions, or when a compliance requirement such as Canada's Protected B points to a hyperscaler. In those cases, cutting the AWS bill in place is the better project.
Are the old “save 80–90%” stories about Hetzner still true?
Not for new builds on dedicated-CPU servers. Hetzner raised cloud prices by about 30–37% in April 2026, and in June raised new dedicated-vCPU orders by 2.1–2.75 times. Hetzner's US locations also include far less traffic than its European ones. Savings reports published before mid-2026 overstate what a new migration will save.
Find out where your bill stands
Put your own numbers into the calculator, or send us your AWS bill and we'll compare it line by line against an optimised AWS baseline and the alternatives that fit your region.