Garage vs Cloudflare R2
Garage is a European alternative to Cloudflare R2: same cloud & hosting use case, headquartered in France and governed by EU GDPR, while Cloudflare R2 (Cloudflare) is based in the United States.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Open-source distributed object storage with S3 API compatibility. Lightweight, resilient design for self-hosting across multiple zones with minimal hardware requirements.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- Primary privacy law
- EU GDPR
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- Yes
- Free tier
- No
Zero egress fees are the whole argument: object storage at 0.015 dollars per GB-month behind an S3-compatible API, 10 GB free, and no bill when you read your data back out. Buckets can be pinned to an EU jurisdiction, though that choice is permanent at creation. The operator is Cloudflare, Inc. of San Francisco, so American law still reaches the account.
- Jurisdiction
- United States
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
Garage vs Cloudflare R2 at a glance
| Garage | Cloudflare R2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | France | 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 Cloudflare ecosystem |
Choose Garage if…
- You want a provider governed by a European privacy regime
- GDPR or public-sector data-protection requirements apply to you
- Open-source code and self-hosting matter to you
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with Cloudflare R2 if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the Cloudflare ecosystem
- Your organisation has no EU data-residency constraints
- Migration costs outweigh the jurisdiction benefits for now
Why choose Garage over Cloudflare R2?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. Cloudflare R2 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.
Garage removes that overhead. As a France-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.