Scaleway review (2026)
Full disclosure: this review is written by Macyou, a competing Mac cloud provider. We rent dedicated Apple Silicon Macs for AI workloads. Every price below comes from Scaleway's public pricing page (verified 2026-07-13), and we link to it so you can check us.
The short version
Scaleway — european cloud with Mac mini bare-metal — is a good fit for teams already on Scaleway's cloud who need vanilla macOS build machines. Entry pricing is about $219/mo for a M4 · 32 GB · 1 TB machine. The two things most people miss before signing up: prices are EUR excl. VAT (€149 / €199 / €335) — USD shown at ≈1.10 and 24-hour minimum allocation (Apple licensing). If your workload is AI inference rather than iOS builds, the lack of pre-installed inference stacks is the biggest practical gap.
Scaleway pricing
List prices from Scaleway's pricing page, as of 2026-07-13.
| Configuration | Monthly | Setup | Contract | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M4 · 16 GB · 256 GB | $164/mo | — | 24h minimum | Ticket-based |
| M4 · 32 GB · 1 TB | $219/mo | — | 24h minimum | Ticket-based |
| M4 Pro · 64 GB · 2 TB | $369/mo | — | 24h minimum | Ticket-based |
What the pricing page doesn't say
- Prices are EUR excl. VAT (€149 / €199 / €335) — USD shown at ≈1.10
- 24-hour minimum allocation (Apple licensing)
- No pre-installed AI tooling — bring-your-own everything
- Max 64 GB unified memory in the lineup
What Scaleway does well
- EU data centers (Paris) and EU jurisdiction
- Hourly billing available
- Part of a full cloud ecosystem (VPC, S3, etc.)
- Transparent public pricing
Where it falls short
- Machines come empty — no AI/ML stacks, no inference API
- Lineup tops out at M4 Pro 64 GB — no Studio-class 128–256 GB
- 24-hour minimum billing on every Mac (Apple licensing)
- No long-term price discount
- Remote access is DIY (SSH/VNC setup yourself)
Scaleway in context
Scaleway offers Apple Silicon as bare-metal Mac minis alongside its general cloud: you get a vanilla macOS machine with SSH/VNC access and hourly or monthly billing. It is a solid choice for iOS CI runners inside an existing Scaleway account, but the machines come empty — no AI stack, no OpenAI-compatible API — the lineup tops out at an M4 Pro with 64 GB, and Apple licensing imposes a 24-hour minimum on every allocation.
Who should choose Scaleway
Choose Scaleway if you are teams already on Scaleway's cloud who need vanilla macOS build machines and the strengths above match your workload. Look elsewhere if the fine print — prices are EUR excl. VAT (€149 / €199 / €335) — USD shown at ≈1.10, 24-hour minimum allocation (Apple licensing) — changes the economics for you, or if you need AI inference running today rather than after a week of setup.
How Macyou compares (yes, that's us)
We built Macyou for the AI use case that generic Mac hosts leave to you: every deployment ships with Ollama or MLX pre-configured and an OpenAI-compatible API, on hardware from an M4 Mac mini (from $99/mo, or $79/mo billed annually) to a Mac Studio M3 Ultra with 256 GB. Our speed numbers are measured on the fleet and published.
- AI stacks pre-installed: Ollama, MLX, agents — deploy in ~5 minutes
- OpenAI-compatible API endpoint out of the box
- Mac Studio class up to M3 Ultra 256 GB + Thunderbolt 5 clustering
- Browser desktop (WebRTC) included — no VNC setup
- Fixed monthly price with annual −20%
Line-by-line numbers with the configurator: Macyou vs Scaleway → · All providers side by side: best Scaleway alternatives →
Other provider reviews
- MacStadium review → — enterprise Mac infrastructure
- MacinCloud review → — pay-as-you-go Mac in the cloud
- AWS EC2 Mac review → — mac instances on Amazon Web Services
- My Remote Mac review → — budget dedicated Mac minis, US-hosted