Cherry Servers vs Linode
Cherry Servers is a European alternative to Linode: same cloud & hosting use case, headquartered in Lithuania and governed by EU GDPR, while Linode (Akamai) is based in the United States.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- Primary privacy law
- EU GDPR
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- No
- Free tier
- No
Flat monthly pricing and unusually clear documentation made it the VPS people recommended to beginners, and the smallest instance still costs 5 dollars a month for one vCPU, 1 GB of memory and 25 GB of SSD. Akamai bought it in 2022 for around 900 million and folded the brand into Akamai Cloud, moving your account under a US corporation based in Massachusetts.
- Jurisdiction
- United States
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
Cherry Servers vs Linode at a glance
| Cherry Servers | Linode | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Lithuania | United States |
| Data jurisdiction | EU / EEA | United States |
| Primary privacy law | EU GDPR | Requires DPA + transfer assessment |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | Yes |
| Best for | Teams that need cloud & hosting built for European data-protection requirements | Teams already invested in the Akamai ecosystem |
Choose Cherry Servers if…
- You want a provider governed by a European privacy regime
- GDPR or public-sector data-protection requirements apply to you
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with Linode if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the Akamai ecosystem
- Your organisation has no EU data-residency constraints
- Migration costs outweigh the jurisdiction benefits for now
About Cherry Servers
Cherry Servers delivers API-driven bare metal cloud and dedicated server infrastructure for workloads that need raw performance without hypervisor overhead. Dedicated machines deploy in under 15 minutes, virtual servers in 5, with configurations scaling to 128 CPU cores, 1152GB of RAM, and 80TB of NVMe storage, plus GPU accelerators for AI and rendering pipelines.
The platform runs on the latest AMD EPYC and Ryzen processors with DDR5 memory and a 100G+ redundant backbone, exposed through a full REST API, CLI, Terraform provider, and Ansible modules. Hourly, monthly, and crypto billing options sit alongside 24/7 human support averaging a 45-second response time.
Key benefits:
- Bare metal servers deployed in 15 minutes with full hardware access
- Infrastructure as code via Terraform, Ansible, CLI, and REST API
- GPU acceleration for AI training, inference, and rendering workloads
- Flexible billing including hourly, fixed-term, and cryptocurrency payments
- 24/7 expert support with average 45-second human response times
- Global footprint spanning EU, US, and Asia-Pacific datacenters
Cherry Servers is headquartered in Šiauliai, Lithuania, founded in 2010, with datacenters in Lithuania, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Chicago, and Singapore. EU operations fall under full GDPR jurisdiction, offering European teams a sovereign bare metal alternative to AWS, GCP, and other US-owned hyperscalers.
Why choose Cherry Servers over Linode?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. Linode is headquartered in the United States, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes: the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
Cherry Servers removes that overhead. As a Lithuania-based provider, it operates under EU GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and finance, that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.