Europees-only alternatief voor Fly.io.
Fly.io ("Fly") is a US-headquartered edge compute platform that runs Firecracker microVMs in 30+ regions including Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid and Stockholm. Fly Inc. is a Delaware corporation, the EU regions are EU-located but US-controlled, and the CLOUD Act applies. Fly's technical approach (microVMs at the edge, near-instant cold start, simple `fly deploy`) is genuinely innovative; replacing it with a sovereign EU stack means trading that specific multi-region edge model for either a region-fixed deployment or a self-managed equivalent on EU infrastructure.
"EU-regio" is geen soevereiniteit. Vier vragen bepalen het.
Data-residency vertelt waar de bits staan. Soevereiniteit vertelt welk rechtssysteem toegang kan afdwingen. Het antwoord moet op alle vier kloppen — anders is de stack niet soeverein.
Waar staat de data fysiek opgeslagen?
Niet "in de cloud" — welk datacenter, in welk land, onder welke rechtsmacht.
Wie zit er nog meer in uw datapad?
Iedere leverancier die data raakt: de CDN, de e-mailrelay, de error-tracker, de analytics-pipeline.
Wiens wetten kunnen openbaarmaking afdwingen?
Een leverancier met hoofdkantoor in de VS valt onder FISA 702 en de CLOUD Act — ook als de bits in Frankfurt staan.
Wie heeft daadwerkelijk de encryptiesleutels?
Als de cloudprovider zowel de data als de sleutels heeft, kan hij de data lezen — ongeacht welke DPA dan ook.
Faalt op rechtsmacht en sleutelbeheer.
EU-bits, Amerikaanse moedermaatschappij, US-subprocessoren in het standaardpad, sleutels beheerd door provider.
Slaagt op alle vier.
EU-gehost op EU-hoofdkantoor infrastructuur. Nul US-subprocessoren in het standaardpad. Klant- of EU-KMS-sleutels. Bij naam vermeld in uw Artikel 28 DPA.
Waarom teams weggaan Fly.io
Fly.io exits we have scoped come from regulated workloads (healthcare SaaS, fintech) where the multi-region edge pattern was nice-to-have but the US-jurisdictional processor was a blocker. The honest answer for these workloads: most don't actually need 30 regions, they need 2-3 EU regions with low latency. That requirement is met by Hetzner Falkenstein + Hetzner Helsinki, or OVH Roubaix + Frankfurt, with a CDN like Bunny.net for static assets — which collectively serves EU users with sub-50ms latency and full EU jurisdiction.
Fly.io diensten en hun EU-only equivalenten
Een migratie is niet "vervang één doos door een andere". De mapping hieronder is wat we draaien voor klanten die weggaan bij Fly.io op basis van Schrems II — volledige EU-rechtsmacht, geen US-moeder in het datapad.
| Fly.io dienst | EU-only alternatief | Engineering-notitie |
|---|---|---|
| Fly Machines (microVMs) | Hetzner Cloud, OVH Public Cloud, Scaleway, self-hosted Firecracker on EU bare metal | For most workloads, regular VMs with multi-region deployment via DNS GeoIP cover the use case. For true microVM-per-request, self-hosted Firecracker on EU compute is the sovereign answer. |
| Fly Apps (PaaS layer) | Coolify on Hetzner with multi-server clustering, Scaleway Serverless Containers, Dokku | Coolify's multi-server feature handles multi-region deployment patterns. |
| Fly Postgres (clustered) | OVH Managed PostgreSQL with replicas, Aiven multi-region EU, self-managed Patroni cluster | Patroni on EU compute is the open-source pattern that powers Fly's own Postgres offering. |
| Fly Redis (Upstash) | OVH Managed Redis, Aiven Redis, Dragonfly self-hosted | Note: Upstash itself is US-headquartered, so Fly Redis is US-on-US. |
| Fly Volumes | Hetzner Volumes, OVH Block Storage, Scaleway Block Storage | Standard NVMe-backed volumes; size-equivalent. |
| Fly Proxy (Anycast) | Bunny.net + EU origin, Cloudflare → Bunny migration first, self-managed Anycast on EU IXP peering | Bunny.net offers Anycast routing across EU; for true global Anycast on EU jurisdiction, self-managed via BGP at an IXP is the path. |
| Fly Postgres failover (multi-region) | Patroni multi-region on EU compute, OVH Multi-AZ Postgres | For EU-only multi-region (e.g. NL + DE active-active with regional failover), Patroni handles it. |
| Fly Secrets | Hashicorp Vault on EU infra, Coolify environment variables, Doppler self-hosted | Vault is the production-grade answer for any non-trivial secrets workload. |
| flyctl / fly deploy DX | Coolify CLI, GitLab CI deploy steps, custom Docker push to Scaleway | The DX gap is real but closeable. Coolify's `coolify deploy` is the closest equivalent. |
| Fly LiteFS (replicated SQLite) | Self-hosted LiteFS on EU compute, rqlite, dqlite | LiteFS is open-source; self-host on Hetzner with multi-region replication. |
Hoe we migreren af van Fly.io
Een typische mid-market migratie loopt in drie fasen. De getallen hieronder gaan uit van een team van 6-10 engineers en een gemiddeld complexe applicatie-stack.
Region strategy decision
Audit which Fly regions you actually use and which ones serve real traffic. For most EU-customer-facing apps, 2-3 EU regions cover it; for global apps, decide on the multi-region pattern (DNS GeoIP, Anycast, regional failover).
Database + storage migration
Fly Postgres replicated to EU managed PostgreSQL or Patroni cluster. Volumes mirrored. Secrets moved to Vault.
App cutover
Apps redeployed on Coolify or Scaleway. DNS migrated to GeoIP routing if multi-region needed. Fly account decommissioned after verification window.
5-year TCO on Fly exits varies more than other US-cloud exits because Fly's pricing model is unusual (per-second microVM billing). For steady-state workloads, Hetzner is dramatically cheaper. For very spiky workloads with long idle periods, Fly's scale-to-zero is hard to match cost-effectively in the EU sovereign space without serverless options like Scaleway Serverless Containers.
Veelgestelde vragen
Fly's "no surveillance" marketing — does it actually mean sovereignty?
Fly.io has been transparent about not being on the US hyperscaler critical-infrastructure surveillance lists. That's an operational claim, not a jurisdictional one. As a US Delaware corporation, Fly is subject to the CLOUD Act regardless of how they market themselves. The legal exposure is the same as any other US-jurisdictional provider.
How do we replace the "microVM cold start" feature?
For most workloads, microVM cold start is a nice-to-have rather than a hard requirement. If you genuinely need it, self-hosted Firecracker on EU compute (the same technology Fly uses) is the path. We deploy this for clients with specific microVM needs.
What about LiteFS for SQLite at the edge?
LiteFS is open-source. Self-host on EU compute with multi-region replication. The migration is mostly mechanical because LiteFS uses standard SQLite under the hood.
How long does a Fly.io exit take?
For a typical workload (a few apps, a Postgres cluster, some volumes): 2–4 weeks elapsed. For multi-region setups with Anycast and LiteFS: 4–8 weeks. The biggest schedule risk is replicating the multi-region pattern, not the technical work itself.
Are there any genuinely Fly-like EU options?
Not yet a 1:1 match in the EU sovereign space. The closest combination is Coolify multi-server + DNS GeoIP for routing + EU managed Postgres. It's not as polished as Fly's integrated experience, but it's sovereign and operationally simpler at the cost of some DX.
What about Fly's GPU offering?
Fly's GPU instances (A10, L40S) compete in inference workloads. Scaleway H100 instances are the EU sovereign alternative for current-generation GPU compute. For older generations, Hetzner has competitive pricing.
Plan je exit van Fly.io.
Gesprek van 30 minuten. We mappen je stack tegen EU-only alternatieven, schatten de migratie-inspanning en zeggen je of het de juiste keuze is.