For years, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has been one of the world’s leading hyperscale providers, offering a vast portfolio of services to businesses across the globe.
But scale and service variety aren’t always what organizations need most. For many European companies, sovereignty, simplicity, and predictable costs matter just as much as raw technical power.
That’s where Clever Cloud stands out, as a smarter alternative to GCP, designed for modern organizations that seek high performance without unnecessary complexity.
A Frictionless Developer Experience
GCP offers an impressive toolbox — spanning from compute to AI/ML — but often requires a dedicated DevOps team to configure, secure, and optimize workloads. Clever Cloud takes a different approach: automating deployment, scaling, and monitoring from the start.
With git push deployments, auto-scaling, and zero-downtime updates, developers spend less time managing infrastructure and more time delivering business value.
Built-in observability (Grafana, Elastic APM), managed databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Kafka), and S3-compatible object storage are included by default — no hidden reliance on external modules.
The result is a smooth, developer-first experience where teams stay productive and organizations remain agile.
European Sovereignty and Compliance First
As a U.S. provider, GCP is subject to extraterritorial laws such as the Cloud Act and FISA, which can create compliance risks for sectors like healthcare, finance, and public administration.
Clever Cloud takes a distinctly European approach, hosting data within the EU or in regions outside U.S. jurisdiction. The platform is fully GDPR-compliant and is actively pursuing SecNumCloud certification, the highest level of trust recognized by the French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) for sensitive workloads.
For organizations where sovereignty is critical, Clever Cloud delivers peace of mind that global hyperscalers simply can’t match.
Transparent and Predictable Pricing
One of the biggest challenges with GCP is cost complexity. With hundreds of services, varying SKUs, and multiple billing models, companies often struggle to forecast their monthly spending.
Clever Cloud takes the opposite approach: clear instance-based pricing, billed per second, with a public cost simulator for accurate forecasting. No hidden fees, no billing surprises — just reliable budget control.
As a result, Clever Cloud isn’t just more transparent, but often more cost-effective than hyperscalers for many real-world workloads.
Built-in Security and Reliability
On GCP, advanced security often requires additional tools, services, or in-house expertise. On Clever Cloud, security is built in by default — including application isolation, data encryption in transit and at rest, automatic backups, and a resilient infrastructure designed for high availability.
Through our strategic partnership with Cloud Temple, Clever Cloud is now available on a SecNumCloud-certified IaaS infrastructure validated by ANSSI. This collaboration combines the power of our automated PaaS with France’s highest recognized level of security, delivering a sovereign and trusted cloud tailored to the critical needs of the public, industrial, financial, and healthcare sectors — all without compromising innovation, performance, or compliance.
Why Choose Clever Cloud Over GCP?
By choosing Clever Cloud, your organization gains:
- A developer-focused PaaS with automated deployments, built-in observability, and seamless scaling.
- Full data sovereignty, compliant with GDPR and SecNumCloud standards.
- Simplified and predictable costs, thanks to transparent per-second billing and a real-time public simulator.
- Integrated security and reliability, including app isolation, encryption, automatic backups, and high-availability infrastructure.
- A partner focused on productivity and compliance, combining technical performance with peace of mind.
Conclusion
While Google Cloud Platform offers global scale and a vast catalog of services, for European organizations it often comes with unnecessary complexity, compliance risks, and unpredictable costs.
Clever Cloud represents a better alternative for Europe — a platform that blends performance, sovereignty, transparency, and security, without sacrificing simplicity.
In just a few minutes, you can deploy your first app on Clever Cloud and see the difference for yourself — a cloud experience where developers thrive and businesses stay in control.
FAQ: Everything You Need to Know About Clever Cloud vs GCP
1. What makes Clever Cloud different from Google Cloud Platform?
Clever Cloud focuses on simplicity, automation, and sovereignty. While GCP offers an immense toolkit requiring DevOps expertise, Clever Cloud delivers a developer-oriented experience with built-in scaling, observability, and compliance — without the overhead.
2. Is Clever Cloud as powerful as GCP?
It depends on your needs. GCP is a hyperscaler offering hundreds of services, from AI/ML pipelines to global networks. Clever Cloud is a specialized PaaS that covers the essentials — compute, databases, storage, and monitoring — in a simpler, more efficient way, ideal for most application workloads.
3. How does Clever Cloud handle data sovereignty compared to GCP?
Clever Cloud guarantees hosting within the EU, GDPR compliance, and independence from U.S. extraterritorial laws like the Cloud Act. GCP offers European regions but remains under U.S. jurisdiction. For regulated sectors, Clever Cloud provides stronger guarantees.
4. What about pricing — is Clever Cloud cheaper than GCP?
Clever Cloud uses a transparent, instance-based pricing model, billed per second, with an online simulator for full visibility. GCP’s pricing can be flexible at scale but is often complex and unpredictable. Many organizations find Clever Cloud both simpler and more cost-effective.
5. Can I migrate easily from GCP to Clever Cloud?
Yes. Most applications can be migrated with minimal changes by adjusting environment variables and configuration. Clever Cloud supports major runtimes, frameworks, and databases, ensuring a smooth transition.
6. Does Clever Cloud support modern architectures like containers and microservices?
Absolutely. Clever Cloud runs Docker containers natively, supports microservices, and offers managed databases, storage, and observability tools — everything needed for distributed applications.
7. Is Clever Cloud suitable for enterprise workloads?
Yes. Clever Cloud is built for critical environments where availability, compliance, and security are paramount. With automatic backups, encryption, and ongoing SecNumCloud certification, it meets the reliability standards enterprises require.
8. When should I choose GCP instead of Clever Cloud?
GCP can be the right choice if you need global scale across multiple continents or highly specialized services (e.g., advanced AI/ML pipelines, massive data lakes). But if your priorities are developer productivity, compliance, and cost control — especially in Europe — Clever Cloud is often the smarter choice.