A European home for your apps, on a bill that stops moving
Clever Cloud is a well-regarded French PaaS with automatic scaling, a managed database range and a genuine EU sovereignty story. It bills the way most PaaS platforms do, by the resources your apps consume, usually in EUR. Ruust makes a narrower promise: one flat price per Egg per month in GBP, egress that is never metered, and containers kept warm around the clock. For UK teams running lots of small, always-on apps, the number on the invoice is the number you picked.
Flat price per Egg, in GBP · unmetered egress · no cold starts
Both are European platforms that take a git repo to a running, HTTPS app with managed databases alongside. The split is the billing philosophy and the currency: Clever Cloud scales resources up and down and charges for what they consume, usually in EUR, whilst Ruust charges a flat GBP price per Egg with unmetered egress and no cold starts. Here is how they compare on what actually shapes your bill.
| Ruust | Clever Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat per Egg, per month, in GBP. Nano £3, Small £6, Standard £12, Large £24. | Resource and usage-based: cost tends to track the compute and resources your apps consume. |
| Egress | Unmetered on every tier. No egress bill, ever. Fair-use rate caps only. | Bandwidth tends to be metered and billed alongside your resource usage. |
| Currency | Priced in GBP, the same in every region. No FX drift for UK teams. | Typically billed in EUR, so UK cards tend to carry conversion and card fees. |
| Cold starts | None. Every Egg is kept warm 24/7, no scale-to-zero, no spin-up lag. | Autoscaling can scale instances down when idle, which can add spin-up lag on the next request. |
| Bill predictability | Same number each month whatever your traffic does. You know it before you deploy. | Automatic scaling is efficient but means the total can move with load month to month. |
| Autoscaling | Manual horizontal scaling with replicas; you choose the Egg size and count. | Automatic vertical and horizontal scaling is a core, mature strength. |
| Databases | Managed Postgres and Redis database Eggs with a persistent volume, private to your Coop. | A broad managed database range is a long-standing part of the platform. |
| EU sovereignty | eu-west (London) cell, plus us-east (Virginia); UK company, Frankfurt coming. | EU-hosted with a strong European data-sovereignty and compliance story. |
Clever Cloud details are as we understand them and can change. Always check Clever Cloud's current pricing and features for the latest.
What you get by switching.
A flat price in pounds, chosen by you
Every Egg is a fixed monthly amount in GBP, the same in every region, with no seat or plan fee to start. There is no scaling meter working out what you owe after the fact, so a quiet month and a busy month land on the same figure. You size the app once and the bill stops being a variable.
Unmetered egress, so traffic never becomes a charge
Egress is unmetered on every tier, from Nano to Large, with no bandwidth line and no volume cap. A launch day, a heavy download endpoint or a chatty API will not appear as an overage on your invoice. Per-Egg fair-use rate caps keep abuse out, but your egress volume is never metered or billed.
Always warm, so nothing cold-starts
Every Egg stays running 24/7 with no scale-to-zero and no spin-up lag, so the first request after a quiet spell is as quick as the last. Autoscaling platforms tend to trim idle capacity to save money, then hand you a slow first request when traffic returns. Ruust keeps small, always-on apps reachable instantly instead.
Live on HTTPS in about two minutes
Connect a repo and Ruust autobuilds it with Nixpacks, or uses your own Dockerfile. Pick a region and size and you are live on HTTPS in roughly two minutes, with TLS issued in about 90 seconds and renewed automatically. Managed Postgres and Redis, private networking inside a Coop, health checks and zero-downtime rolling deploys all come as standard.
Where Clever Cloud is the better fit.
A genuine European sovereignty story
Clever Cloud is a French company hosting in the EU, with a mature stance on European data sovereignty and compliance. If your first requirement is a wholly EU-based provider with that positioning, it is a strong and credible choice, and a fair reason to pick it over a UK platform still building out its region list.
Mature automatic scaling
Automatic vertical and horizontal scaling has long been part of Clever Cloud, and for workloads with variable or unpredictable load, letting the platform right-size resources for you can be both convenient and economical. Ruust's flat, always-warm model is aimed at the opposite shape, so weigh your traffic honestly.
A broad managed database range
Clever Cloud offers a wide catalogue of managed databases and add-on services built up over many years. If you want a deep menu of provisioned data stores under one European account, that breadth is a real advantage that a newer, more focused platform does not match overnight.
Ruust vs Clever Cloud, the common questions.
Is Ruust cheaper than Clever Cloud?
It depends on your workload, and we would rather be straight than invent their prices. For small, always-on apps that serve steady or heavy traffic, a flat GBP price with unmetered egress is usually cheaper and always more predictable. For workloads with spiky, variable load, an autoscaling platform that right-sizes resources can sometimes cost less. The honest win with Ruust is knowing the number in advance.
What does unmetered egress actually mean?
It means there is no metering and no volume cap on outbound bandwidth, on any tier, and no egress line on your invoice. We keep per-Egg fair-use rate caps and abuse controls so one Egg cannot degrade the platform, but a busy, high-traffic month will never generate a bandwidth charge. That differs from a metered model, where transfer tends to start costing money once it passes an allowance.
Do apps scale to zero or cold-start on Ruust?
No. Every Egg is kept warm 24/7 with no scale-to-zero and no spin-up lag, so even a rarely hit endpoint answers immediately. Autoscaling platforms often trim idle instances to save money, which trades that saving for start-up latency on the next request. On Ruust the first visitor after a quiet night gets the same response as the last.
Is Ruust an EU-hosted platform like Clever Cloud?
Partly, and it is fair to be precise. Ruust is a UK company (The Night Project) with an eu-west cell in London and us-east in Virginia live today, and Frankfurt on the way. Each region is an independent cell and an Egg lives in one region. If a wholly EU-based provider with a formal sovereignty story is a hard requirement, Clever Cloud has the longer track record there today.