Looking for an AWS alternative?
If your AWS bill is a few servers, storage and a load balancer, the servers aren't what grows. The meters around them are: data out, load balancer traffic, and 9% on top to chat with a person. We don't have those meters, so the stack priced below runs $190 a month here against $398 on AWS at 1,000 GB out.
Best AWS alternatives in 2026
Which one fits depends on what you run on AWS and why you're leaving. Here's who each one suits, starting with us.
American Cloud
Teams running servers, Kubernetes, databases and storage in the US who want a fast human answer when something breaks and a bill that doesn't follow their traffic.
DigitalOcean
Developers and small teams that want simple virtual servers. We compare it with American Cloud line by line on its own page.
Vultr
Teams that need servers in many countries. Vultr lists 33 cloud data center regions and also rents bare metal.
Hetzner
Teams that want a German company, with cloud servers in Germany, Finland, Singapore and the US.
Akamai Cloud (Linode)
Teams already using Akamai's network. Linode is now part of Akamai Cloud.
American Cloud vs AWS, side by side
List prices from each company's own pages, monthly, in US dollars. AWS prices are for US East (N. Virginia), On-Demand, Linux. The AWS server is a c7i.large, which isn't one of AWS's burstable T instances.
We took the AWS prices from its pricing pages and docs on October 16, 2026. Ours come from our pricing page.
What one production stack costs on each
Three servers with public IPs behind a load balancer, plus block storage, object storage and support with chat. On AWS, two lines grow as you send more: traffic, and the support fee that tracks the bill. Here, both are $0.
On AWS, support is Business Support+, the cheapest plan with chat, at 9% of the bill. Load balancer traffic is counted at AWS's rate of one LCU per GB an hour, and the load balancer's own IPv4 addresses aren't counted, so AWS's real totals run a little higher.
Savings Plans can lower the AWS server line by up to 72% if you commit for one or three years. They don't apply to transfer, IP addresses or support, which are most of the AWS total once traffic reaches 10,000 GB.
Every line is rounded to the dollar, so a column can add up a dollar off its total. Our servers are priced on the monthly term.
Why teams switch from AWS
A person on chat, without a support plan
On AWS, the free Basic plan answers account and billing questions. To ask why your app is down, you buy Business Support+, and because its fee is a share of your bill, it grows as you do. Here, chat and tickets come with every account, and a person replies in under 2 minutes at the median. You don't upgrade to be heard.
Traffic doesn't move your bill
On AWS, a good month costs more. Every GB that leaves past the first 100 is billed, and the load balancer bills the same traffic again. Bandwidth is a fixed cost for us, so we keep it a fixed cost for you: no meter on servers, Kubernetes, object storage or the load balancer. A launch, a backup restore or a customer's big export leaves the bill where it was.
Your server stack moves over piece by piece
EC2, S3, load balancers, EKS and RDS PostgreSQL or MySQL each have a match here, so the move is a copy, not a redesign. The list under Moving from AWS shows what each one becomes. What we don't have is the rest of AWS's catalog. If your bill has lines outside those five, check each one before you plan the move.
Your AI assistant can do the move
Give Claude Code or another assistant read-only AWS credentials and the American Cloud MCP server. It lists your EC2 instances, buckets, DNS zones and load balancers, prices the same setup here, and builds it once you turn writes on. It only reads from AWS, so nothing there changes until you shut it down yourself.
Moving from AWS
Start with one service that isn't critical. AWS keeps serving until you switch DNS, and each service you move takes its lines off the AWS bill.
- EC2 instances become VMs of a matching size. You set up your software again and copy your files over SSH with rsync.
- S3 buckets copy straight to our S3-compatible object storage with rclone.
- Route 53 zones and records are recreated as DNS zones here. Lower the TTLs ahead of time, then switch.
- ELB and ALB load balancers become load balancers in front of the new VMs.
- You apply your EKS workloads again on a new managed Kubernetes cluster.
- RDS PostgreSQL and MySQL databases move with pg_dump or mysqldump into managed PostgreSQL or MySQL.
Hundreds of teams have already moved to American Cloud from AWS or DigitalOcean.
The AWS migration guide has every step, plus prompts for your assistant. Price the new servers in the pricing calculator, or read about Cloud Compute, Kubernetes and Object Storage. Before you switch DNS, run your domain through our free DNS lookup and save its records and TTLs. Run it again after the switch to see when Cloudflare and Google return the new address.
Questions before you switch
Is American Cloud cheaper than AWS?
For a stack like the one above, yes, and the gap widens with every GB you send. At 10,000 GB out, it costs about a seventh as much here as on AWS. To check your own, find the data transfer and support lines on your last AWS bill. You wouldn't pay either here. Then price your servers in our calculator.
How hard is it to switch from AWS?
It's a rebuild, not a rewrite. You create each server here, copy the data and switch DNS, with AWS still running until you're sure. An app that runs mostly on Lambda and Step Functions takes more work: it has to move onto servers or Kubernetes first.
Does American Cloud charge for outbound data transfer?
No. There's no egress fee on VMs, Kubernetes or object storage, and our load balancer doesn't charge by the GB. On AWS, sending 10,000 GB a month costs $891 in transfer alone.
Where does American Cloud run?
In the US only, across three zones. We don't run servers in other countries, and we'd rather you know that now than after the move. Our SLA sets a 99.9% network uptime target, with service credits when we miss it. We also own and run the OpenColo data center in Santa Clara, California.
Try American Cloud
Sign up, load funds into your account, and start a VM next to your AWS setup. If you get stuck, open the chat and a person will answer.