Gcore vs Public Cloud: Complete Comparison (2026)

Why choose Gcore

• Has a free plan (Public Cloud does not)
• Higher Analytics score (7/10 vs 3/10)
• Higher Scalability score (8/10 vs 6/10)
• Better fit for enterprise (8/10 vs 5/10)

Why choose Public Cloud

• Higher Cost score (8/10 vs 7/10)

Gcore

Pros

• The CDN includes 1 TB of traffic and 1 billion requests free each month, and traffic after that starts at 0.01 EUR per GB.
• DDoS protection pricing does not depend on attack size, and mitigation is not metered on any plan.
• The managed Kubernetes control plane is free with high availability, so you pay only for the nodes.
• A large edge footprint, reported at about 210 PoPs and 200 Tbps of capacity, suits latency-sensitive workloads such as gaming and streaming.
• Headquarters in Luxembourg is an advantage for buyers who prefer an EU-based provider.

Cons

• Trustpilot scores are around 2.5 out of 5, with complaints about recurring billing, refunds, and slow support.
• There is no public price list for VMs and bare metal; prices are only available through the calculator.
• The Terraform v2 provider is still in alpha and Gcore says it is not ready for production.
• The product range is very broad, which can make it harder for small teams to understand how pricing works.

Public Cloud

Pros

• Owned data centers located only in Switzerland, which supports data-sovereignty requirements
• Built on standard OpenStack, so existing tooling works and moving to another provider is easier
• Hourly billing that excludes most charges for stopped instances
• CHF 300 of free credit for the first 3 months
• S3-compatible object storage, encrypted block storage and DDoS protection

Cons

• All regions are in Switzerland, so there is no wider geographic footprint
• Invoices can only be paid by credit card
• Third-party benchmarks note missing monitoring charts and reverse DNS
• Very few independent user reviews on G2 or Capterra