Exoscale free credits: None

Exoscale offers no free credit. As of 2026-08-21, signing up requires adding funds, on a prepaid model, to validate your payment method before you can use the platform. There is no trial balance and no signup grant on the official signup page or FAQ. This page records that negative finding with a date.

Prepaid from the first minute

Exoscale’s model inverts the usual trial flow: instead of a credit you spend down, you deposit money you spend down. That removes the bill-shock failure mode of auto-billing trials like OVHcloud’s, but it also means there is no way to evaluate Exoscale at $0. One operational trap from the FAQ side: stopped instances still accrue storage charges, and an account balance can go negative.

GPU is gated separately

GPU instances require account validation, with manual screening and priority given to established businesses. So even a funded new account does not get immediate GPU access. If you need a free or low-friction GPU path, this is the wrong provider; the options are compared in how to choose between a VPS, GPU cloud, serverless, or a sandbox.

What to use instead

For a European VPS you can evaluate at $0 first, two tracked entries do what Exoscale will not. UpCloud is advertising a promotional trial of $500 in credits for your first 30 days, verified with a credit card but with no payment required for the trial itself; if the promotion ends, the documented baseline is a 7-day quota-limited trial. Scaleway gives new Professional accounts EUR 100 of signup credit on EU datacenters, with a valid credit card and a reimbursed EUR 1 authorization, though how long the credit stays valid is not stated officially. Both ask for a card; neither asks you to deposit your own money first.

What I have done with it

Not tested yet. This page reports only what the official pages state.

Choose Exoscale if you want a European provider on a prepaid model and are past the free-evaluation stage; skip it if you want any form of credit first, in which case Scaleway’s €100 is the nearest European alternative. Every grant I track, including negative findings like this one and Hetzner’s, is on the credits index.