The Ukrainian cloud market is maturing fast: in July 2026 the antitrust committee approved Kyivstar’s acquisition of the country’s largest provider, GigaCloud. Consolidation is a sign of maturity — and a good moment to ask yourself: is your current provider the right one, and by what criteria should you even choose?
We are a player in this market, so we have an obvious interest. Here is the deal: this article contains only verifiable public facts from company websites and media (as of July 2026), and for each provider — its strengths and its typical customer. Including an honest answer about who we ourselves are NOT a fit for.
The Ukrainian market historically grew on VMware — the main path of De Novo, GigaCloud and partly UCloud. VMware is a mature enterprise standard: if your team has worked with vSphere for a decade, migration to such a cloud is almost seamless. After VMware’s change of ownership (Broadcom) and licensing revamp, everyone asks what happens to VMware-cloud pricing next — and the large players answered with a second line: OpenStack clouds without vendor licensing fees.
So the difference between players today is not “who runs what” but what place OpenStack holds in the provider’s model. At GigaCloud it is the second, budget line next to the VMware flagship: template vCPU/RAM configurations, fixed monthly tariffs, Kyiv and Lviv zones; their site recommends the VMware cloud for more complex workloads. For us, OpenStack is the one and only platform: all engineering, the panel, the API and hourly billing are built around it. Both approaches are legitimate — just understand honestly what role your cloud plays in the provider’s portfolio.
The country’s largest cloud provider by cloud revenue: over 1,500 projects since 2016, data centers in three availability zones (Kyiv, Lviv, Warsaw). The widest portfolio on the market: public clouds on VMware and OpenStack/KVM, private clouds, GPU/LLM infrastructure, VDI, cybersecurity, managed services. KSZI attestation and PCI DSS certification. Billing — fixed monthly tariffs published as a document; migration by their engineers is free. Since 2026 — in the process of joining the Kyivstar ecosystem.
Strong at: turnkey enterprise projects, portfolio breadth, public sector.
Typical customer: medium and large business that wants a provider-integrator with manager-led support.
The oldest enterprise brand on the market: its own Tier III data center in Kyiv, clouds built to VMware and SAP reference architectures. The company publicly keeps prices at pre-war levels and positions itself as up to 30% cheaper than global hyperscalers.
Strong at: critical enterprise workloads, SAP landscapes, maximum site-reliability requirements.
Typical customer: corporations and banks with a classic enterprise stack.
The first Ukrainian cloud operator — on the market since 2011. Built on several virtualization platforms (Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware), four data centers in Ukraine and abroad. Positioning — an affordable Azure alternative with Ukrainian-language support and billing in hryvnia.
Strong at: flexibility for Windows stacks (Hyper-V), 13+ years of experience.
Typical customer: small and medium business on Microsoft technologies.
The youngest of the four — built on a different model: self-service on OpenStack. A server, Kubernetes cluster or GPU is created from the console in minutes with no manager call; billing is hourly, in hryvnia. Three locations: Ukraine, Poland, the Netherlands. ISO/IEC 27001 certified, 99.95% availability.
What sets the economics apart: the network stack is free — Load Balancer, Firewall, private networks and the Managed Kubernetes service cost $0, S3 storage is $0.005/GB/mo with no traffic or request charges. Plus what is still rare on this market: GPU by the hour (up to the new Blackwell cards) and a Solution Marketplace with 66 ready images — from WordPress to your own LLM.
Strong at: self-service for developers and product teams, hourly economics (dev/test, GPU experiments), a predictable bill without “small print lines”.
Typical customer: IT teams, SaaS, startups, mid-market — those who want to run infrastructure themselves.
Who we are NOT a fit for (honestly): if you require a VMware stack, a large provider-integrator with a project office, or KSZI attestation today — the colleagues above are your choice. KSZI is on our roadmap; when it arrives, we will update this article.
| Criterion | GigaCloud | De Novo | UCloud | OneCloudPlanet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform | VMware (flagship) + OpenStack/KVM | VMware / SAP | Hyper-V, VMware | OpenStack (single platform) |
| Locations | Kyiv, Lviv, Warsaw (OpenStack: Kyiv, Lviv) | Kyiv (Tier III) | 4 DCs, Ukraine + abroad | Ukraine, Poland, Netherlands |
| Sales model | manager-led + portal | manager-led | mixed | self-service + consulting |
| Billing | fixed monthly tariffs (published document) | contract, fixed prices | contract | hourly, in UAH |
| Load Balancer / Firewall | part of solutions | part of solutions | n/a | free, $0 |
| Managed Kubernetes | n/a | n/a | n/a | service $0, pay for nodes |
| GPU by the hour | AI infrastructure available | n/a | n/a | yes, from $0.46/hr |
| Public sector / KSZI | yes, KSZI attestation | yes | n/a | planned |
| Best for | enterprise, government | enterprise, SAP | SMB on Microsoft | developers, SaaS, mid-market |
All facts are from the companies’ public websites, as of July 2026. “n/a” — not stated publicly.
1. Who will run the cloud? If you have a team — self-service and API matter more than a manager. If not — look for managed services.
2. What is your stack? Legacy on VMware — a VMware cloud saves months of migration. Containers/Linux/Terraform — OpenStack is more natural and cheaper.
3. How do you pay? Stable 24/7 workloads — monthly contracts are fine. Variable ones (dev/test, peaks, GPU experiments) — hourly billing saves tens of percent.
4. What about compliance? A state system requiring KSZI — attested sites only. Commercial data — ISO 27001 and a Ukraine/EU location are enough.
5. Calculate the FULL bill. Compare not the vCPU price but the whole month: load balancers, firewall, IPs, traffic, backups. The “second bill” is what usually decides.
The 2026 market is no longer “anyone with a data center” but mature players with different models. Enterprise with VMware legacy has plenty to choose from; for teams building new things we offer a different path — an open stack, hourly economics and a console instead of calls. Compare pricing or check it against your own bill — the audit is free.
