Frankfurt vs Amsterdam VPS is one of the most common questions when a team first moves workloads into Europe, and London usually joins the shortlist a minute later. All three are major interconnection hubs, all three are available as Cloudj cloud servers, and on monthly plans all three include the same 5 TB of traffic per month. That means the decision is rarely about raw resources. It comes down to where your users are, which legal framework your data sits under, and which ecosystem your other services already live in. This guide compares the three on those points and ends with a plain verdict.
If you are still deciding whether Europe is the right region at all, start with the wider Europe VPS guide, which covers all seven Cloudj locations on the continent.
Frankfurt vs Amsterdam VPS vs London at a glance
| Factor | Frankfurt (Germany) | Amsterdam (Netherlands) | London (United Kingdom) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traffic on monthly plans | 5 TB | 5 TB | 5 TB |
| Plan range | 1 vCPU / 1 GB / 20 GB up to custom 104 vCPU / 512 GB | Same | Same |
| CPU types | Shared, general purpose, dedicated | Same | Same |
| Data protection framework | EU GDPR | EU GDPR | UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 |
| Natural audience | Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Central and Eastern Europe | Benelux, Western Europe, pan-EU services | UK and Ireland, finance, English-language markets |
| Typical fit | Business apps for German-speaking customers, EU SaaS | VPN endpoints, CDN-style edges, pan-European services | Forex and finance tools, UK e-commerce, UK-facing SaaS |
| Product page | Germany | Netherlands | United Kingdom |
The first three rows are identical: Cloudj offers the same 30 ready-made plans and build-your-own option in each city, so a workload can move between them without resizing. The real differences are in the bottom rows.
Market fit: who are you serving?
Frankfurt
Frankfurt hosts one of the largest internet exchanges in the world and sits close to the geographic centre of the EU. For an audience in Germany, Austria and Switzerland it is the natural default, and it is often a sensible middle point when users are spread across Central and Eastern Europe as well. German business customers often ask where their data is hosted, and "in Germany" is an easy answer.
Frankfurt is a common choice for internal tools and automation stacks that serve a German-speaking team. Our guide to self-hosting n8n on a German VPS is a good example, and the best VPS in Germany article covers the location in more depth.
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is another very large interconnection point, with a long history of hosting networks that serve the whole of Western Europe. It is a strong neutral choice when you do not have a single dominant country in your audience, for example a SaaS product sold across the EU or a VPN endpoint for a distributed team. Our walkthrough of running WireGuard on a Netherlands VPS uses Amsterdam for exactly that reason, and best VPS in the Netherlands explains the trade-offs.
London
London is the obvious pick for a UK or Irish audience and for finance workloads that want to be near the City's trading infrastructure. Retail sites selling in pounds, UK-facing SaaS and trading tools all fit here. If trading is your use case, read forex VPS in London before you deploy, and see best VPS in the United Kingdom for the general picture.
UK vs EU data rules, in general terms
This section is general background, not legal advice. Talk to your own adviser about your specific situation.
- Germany and the Netherlands are EU member states, so personal data stored there falls under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Data moving between EU countries is not an international transfer under GDPR.
- The United Kingdom left the EU and now has its own regime: the UK GDPR together with the Data Protection Act 2018. The rules are very close to the EU version in substance, but they are a separate legal framework with a separate regulator.
- Transfers between the two. The EU has issued an adequacy decision for the UK, which allows personal data to flow from the EU to the UK without extra transfer mechanisms. Adequacy decisions are reviewed over time, so check the current status if your compliance depends on it.
What this means in practice: if your contracts or customers specifically require "data stored in the EU", choose Frankfurt or Amsterdam. If your customers are British and expect UK hosting, London keeps things simple. If neither applies, data rules probably will not decide the question, and network position will.
Network position: measure, do not guess
All three cities are well connected to each other, and the distance between them is small compared with the distance to Asia or North America. For most web workloads the difference between them will be modest, but it is not zero, and it depends on your users' networks rather than on a map.
Cloudj does not publish latency figures, and generic numbers will not reflect your audience. Instead:
- Deploy a small hourly server in each candidate city from the console.
- Run
pingandmtrfrom machines that represent your users, or from monitoring probes in their countries. - Compare median and worst-case results over a day, not a single run.
- Delete the test servers when you are done, because hourly servers are charged for as long as they exist, running or stopped.
The step-by-step method is in testing VPS latency with ping and mtr, and choosing a VPS location by latency explains how to read the results.
mtr --report --report-cycles 100 YOUR_SERVER_IPCost and traffic
Because all three locations include 5 TB of traffic per month on monthly plans and share the same plan catalogue, cost is rarely the tie-breaker. Prices can still differ by location, so see live prices on the pricing page or let the console show the exact figure before you deploy. If you prefer hourly billing for a test or a short project, remember that traffic on hourly servers is charged per GB used rather than included.
When none of the three is right
Sometimes the honest answer is another city. If your audience is in Spain or Italy, Madrid or Milan will usually be closer; Stockholm suits the Nordics and Bucharest suits South-Eastern Europe. If your users are mostly outside Europe, a European server may not be the right base at all.
Verdict
- Choose Frankfurt if your users are mainly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland or Central and Eastern Europe, or your customers want data hosted in Germany specifically.
- Choose Amsterdam if you serve a spread-out Western European or pan-EU audience, need an EU location without a strong country preference, or are building a VPN or edge endpoint.
- Choose London if your audience is in the UK or Ireland, you run finance or trading tools tied to the City, or your customers expect UK hosting under UK data law.
If you still cannot decide, run the latency test from your real users. The city that wins for them is the right one.
FAQ
Do Frankfurt, Amsterdam and London include the same traffic?
Yes. On monthly plans each of the three includes 5 TB of traffic per month. On hourly billing, traffic is charged per GB used.
Is a London VPS covered by GDPR?
A London server falls under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, which closely mirror the EU GDPR but form a separate UK framework. If you need data stored inside the EU, pick Frankfurt or Amsterdam.
Can I move a server from one city to another later?
Yes. Plan sizes are the same in all three cities, so a new server can match the old one exactly. Save a custom image or keep your setup scripted, deploy the new server, move your data, then delete the old one.
Which city has the lowest latency?
It depends on where your users connect from. Deploy a test server in each city and measure with ping and mtr from your users' networks rather than relying on published numbers.
Deploy your European server
Pick the city that fits your users and your data rules, then deploy it in a few minutes from the Cloudj console. You can check live prices for Frankfurt, Amsterdam and London on the pricing page first, and start with an hourly server if you want to test before committing to a term.