Cloud Exit for SMEs: Costs, Dependencies, Target Architecture and Process
Editorial note: The information in this article was compiled to the best of our knowledge at the time of publication. Technical details, prices, versions, licensing terms, and external content may change. Please verify the information provided independently, particularly before making business-critical or security-related decisions. This article does not replace individual professional, legal, or tax advice.
Considering leaving AWS, Azure or Google Cloud? WZ-IT's Cloud Exit Check delivers cost picture, target architecture, migration path and a fixed-price quote for the migration, from €1,490 excl. VAT, credited towards the migration. For a first look at your costs there is the free cloud cost analysis. Book a free initial consultation
A cloud exit rarely starts with a decision of principle. It usually starts with a bill that grows faster than the business, a price change, a data sovereignty requirement, or a question from the board about what happens if the provider changes its terms. Common guides answer this with generic step lists. A decision, however, needs numbers: what the move costs, which services make it harder, which rights the contract provides and what the target environment looks like.
This guide sorts the cost blocks with values from price lists, summarises the switching rules of the EU Data Act with deadlines, compares the exit programmes of AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, shows dependencies per service and describes the process in phases. As of October 2026.
Key points at a glance:
- An exit strategy is a plan, not a decision to move. It makes a move plannable when it is needed.
- Since 12 September 2025, the EU Data Act regulates deadlines and charges for cloud switching. From 12 January 2027, switching charges are prohibited.
- AWS, Azure and Google Cloud already waive egress when leaving, each with its own conditions.
- Dependencies determine how difficult the move becomes: virtual machines and PostgreSQL move easily, proprietary databases and serverless services do not.
- A partial exit is often a better route than leaving completely.
Table of Contents
- What a cloud exit is and what it is not
- Triggers: why businesses leave the hyperscaler cloud
- Cost picture: the five cost blocks of a cloud exit
- Egress when leaving: what AWS, Azure and Google Cloud waive
- EU Data Act: deadlines and charges for cloud switching
- Identifying dependencies: which services make the exit harder
- Target architecture: where workloads move to
- The cloud exit process in six phases
- What belongs in the contract
- Common misconceptions
- Our approach at WZ-IT
- Further guides
What a cloud exit is and what it is not
Cloud exit is used for three different things. The distinction matters because it determines costs and process.
| Term | Meaning | Typical trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Exit strategy | documented plan for the case that a move becomes necessary; no move | risk management, requirements from customers or regulators |
| Partial exit | individual services move, others stay | cost drivers such as servers, databases and traffic |
| Full exit | all workloads and data leave the provider | sovereignty, costs, end of contract |
In all three cases the target is not necessarily your own data centre. Often it is a European infrastructure provider, rented dedicated servers or a private cloud based on Proxmox.
Triggers: why businesses leave the hyperscaler cloud
| Trigger | What lies behind it |
|---|---|
| Costs | Data transfer to the internet, managed services and always-on instances add up. In Frankfurt, AWS charges USD 0.09 per GB of outgoing traffic after 100 free GB (AWS, EC2 on-demand pricing). |
| Dependency | Proprietary services, term commitments and know-how bind you to one provider. The provider sets prices and terms. |
| Data sovereignty | Under the CLOUD Act, US providers must disclose data under their control "regardless of whether such communication, record, or other information is located within or outside of the United States" (18 U.S.C. § 2713). |
| Requirements | Customers, auditors or regulators ask for a documented exit. The German BSI, together with UP KRITIS, has published recommendations on preparing an exit strategy when using cloud services (version 1.0, 31 March 2022). |
The background on data sovereignty is described in Move servers and data to European clouds.
Cost picture: the five cost blocks of a cloud exit
A sound decision compares today's running costs with future running costs plus the one-off costs of the move. The one-off costs consist of five blocks:
| Cost block | What it includes | How to reduce it |
|---|---|---|
| Data transfer during the move | egress for all data leaving the provider | providers' exit programmes, Data Act from 12 January 2027 |
| Parallel operation | old and new environment run at the same time | short cut-over windows per wave, moving in waves |
| Rebuild | services without a direct equivalent at the target | partial exit, choose portable alternatives in advance |
| Ongoing commitments | Savings Plans and Reserved Instances with 1 or 3 year terms, Database Savings Plans 1 year (AWS, Savings Plans FAQ) | align the exit date with the terms |
| Operating the target environment | updates, backups and monitoring previously handled by the provider | own team or an operator, clearly scoped |
For running costs, traffic matters most:
| Outgoing traffic | AWS Frankfurt | Azure Europe | Hetzner Cloud (EU) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free allowance | 100 GB per month | 100 GB per month | 20 TB per server (CX, CPX, CAX), 20-60 TB for CCX |
| Price after that | USD 0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB, tiered down to USD 0.05 above 150 TB | USD 0.087 per GB for the next 10 TB | only outgoing traffic is billed |
| Incoming | free | free | free |
Sources: AWS, EC2 on-demand pricing, Azure bandwidth pricing, Hetzner Docs, traffic, Hetzner Docs, cloud billing FAQ. As of October 2026. Hetzner dedicated servers have a 1 Gbit uplink with unlimited traffic.
Example calculation: 10 TB of outgoing traffic per month costs around USD 890 at AWS in Frankfurt (9,900 GB × USD 0.09, calculated with 1 TB = 1,000 GB after deducting the free allowance). On a Hetzner cloud server the same volume is within the included allowance. The egress prices of all major providers are compared in Public internet egress costs.
European providers change prices too. Hetzner raised prices for newly ordered cloud servers on 15 June 2026, for example CX23 from EUR 3.99 to EUR 5.49 and CPX22 from EUR 7.99 to EUR 19.49 net per month; existing servers keep their price (Hetzner Docs, price adjustment). Our assessment is in Hetzner price increase June 2026. A cost picture therefore compares specific configurations, not providers in general.
Egress when leaving: what AWS, Azure and Google Cloud waive
All three hyperscalers waive data transfer fees when a customer transfers data in order to leave the platform. The conditions differ considerably:
| Provider | Procedure | Time window | Condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | request through AWS Support, credits after approval | 90 days for the move (since 30 September 2025, previously 60) | the account does not have to be closed |
| Microsoft Azure | support request with subscription ID, start date and data volume | 60 days from the stated start date, credits for at most 60 days | then cancel all subscriptions |
| Google Cloud | exit notice via form, review, then migration period | migration period of at least 30 days | migrate all workloads and data, the agreement for the service ends |
Sources: AWS News Blog, free data transfer out when moving out of AWS, Microsoft Learn, cancel your Azure subscription, Google Cloud, exit cloud. As of October 2026.
For planning, this means: the data transfer is scheduled within the programme's time window, and the data transfer is tested beforehand so that the window is not spent on troubleshooting. With Azure and Google Cloud the programme only fits a full exit; with AWS it also fits a partial exit.
EU Data Act: deadlines and charges for cloud switching
Regulation (EU) 2023/2854, the Data Act, has applied since 12 September 2025. Chapter VI (Articles 23 to 31) regulates switching between data processing services and therefore between cloud providers (EUR-Lex, Regulation (EU) 2023/2854).
| Rule | Content | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Notice period for switching | at most two months | Art. 25(2)(d) |
| Transitional period | at most 30 calendar days after the notice period | Art. 25(2)(a) |
| Technically unfeasible | provider notifies within 14 working days, alternative transitional period of at most seven months | Art. 25(4) |
| Extension by the customer | possible once | Art. 25(5) |
| Data retrieval | at least 30 calendar days after the transitional period | Art. 25(2)(g) |
| Erasure | full erasure after the retrieval period if switching was successful | Art. 25(2)(h) |
| Scope of data | input and output data including metadata | Art. 2(38) |
| Switching charges until 12 January 2027 | reduced only, at most the direct costs of switching | Art. 29(2) and (3) |
| Switching charges from 12 January 2027 | prohibited | Art. 29(1) |
| Egress | counts as part of switching charges ("data egress charges") | Art. 2(36) |
| Parallel use (multi-cloud) | data egress charges remain permitted, only to pass on costs | Art. 34(2) |
| Infrastructure (IaaS) | provider supports the customer in achieving functional equivalence | Art. 30(1) |
| Exceptions | custom-built services exempt from the charging rules, test and evaluation versions entirely | Art. 31 |
Two consequences for planning: first, for an exit after 12 January 2027 it is worth checking whether the provider still charges for switching. Second, the Data Act does not help with technical dependencies. It secures access to the data, not its reusability in another service.
Not legal advice. How the rules apply to your contracts should be clarified with your legal advisers. Trademarks belong to their owners.
Identifying dependencies: which services make the exit harder
How difficult an exit becomes is decided by the service list. The closer a service is to an open standard, the easier it moves.
| Hyperscaler service (AWS example) | Portability | Equivalent at the target |
|---|---|---|
| EC2 (virtual machines) | high | virtual machines at the target provider or in a Proxmox environment |
| RDS PostgreSQL or MySQL | high | self-operated PostgreSQL or MySQL, transfer via dump or replication |
| S3 | high | S3-compatible object storage |
| EKS (Kubernetes) | medium to high | Kubernetes at the target provider, adapting storage, load balancers and permissions |
| CloudFront | medium | CDN of another provider, new cache rules |
| Route 53 | medium | DNS of the target provider, zone export |
| SQS, SNS, EventBridge | low to medium | RabbitMQ or NATS, adapting the application |
| Lambda | low | containers or functions on your own platform, rebuilding triggers |
| DynamoDB | low | no direct equivalent, rebuild data model and application |
| IAM, Cognito | low | identity service such as Keycloak, new permission model |
| CloudWatch | medium | monitoring and logging stack at the target |
The same logic applies to Azure and Google Cloud: virtual machines, standard databases and object storage move easily, proprietary databases, functions and event services do not. How the transfer works in practice is shown in AWS S3 to Hetzner Object Storage and AWS RDS PostgreSQL to Hetzner. Self-hostable S3-compatible storage is compared in MinIO successor.
Besides technology, three more dependencies belong on the list: term commitments (Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, Marketplace subscriptions), team know-how tied to the provider's tools, and third-party integrations pointing to the provider's endpoints.
Target architecture: where workloads move to
| Target model | Fits | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| European cloud (e.g. Hetzner Cloud) | virtual machines, Kubernetes, object storage, variable load | fewer managed services, operations lie with you or an operator |
| Dedicated servers | steady load, databases, high traffic | hardware replacement and redundancy must be planned |
| Private cloud with Proxmox | many virtual machines, tenants, own hardware or rented servers | own platform operations |
| Hybrid / partial exit | move cost drivers, keep specialised services | two environments, connection between both |
| Self-hosted PaaS | applications from Heroku, Vercel or similar platforms | build and deploy processes are set up anew |
The target architecture follows from the service list, not the other way round. For workloads with steady load and high traffic, dedicated servers are often the cheapest; for variable load, a cloud with usage-based billing. For platform services such as Heroku or Vercel, the page PaaS cloud exit describes the route. An overview of all migration routes from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and other providers is in the migration hub.
The cloud exit process in six phases
- Inventory. Bills of recent months, service list per account and region, data volumes, term commitments, third-party integrations, availability requirements.
- Cost picture and target architecture. Today's and future running costs, one-off costs by the five blocks, target model per workload, decision on partial or full exit.
- Pilot. A manageable workload moves first. It tests networking, data transfer, monitoring and backups at the target.
- Migration in waves. Per wave an initial data transfer, then delta syncs and a short cut-over with a fixed fallback plan. Databases via replication or dump, files via synchronisation.
- Parallel operation and decommissioning. The old environment remains available until acceptance and is then switched off service by service. The egress programme is scheduled into this phase.
- Termination and erasure. Termination according to contractual deadlines, data retrieval within the retrieval period, proof of erasure from the provider.
The order of the waves follows dependencies: first storage and databases used by many services, or conversely first independent applications, depending on where the connection between old and new environment generates less traffic.
What belongs in the contract
The BSI's UP KRITIS paper recommends planning the exit long term, documenting the retrievability of data and contractually agreeing minimum transition periods, migration support, data formats and documented erasure (BSI, UP KRITIS exit strategy). The BSI C5:2020 criteria catalogue requires, under portability and interoperability, contractual agreements on the provision of data (PI-02).
As a checklist for existing and new contracts:
- notice period and transitional period for switching (Data Act: at most two months and 30 calendar days)
- data retrieval period (Data Act: at least 30 calendar days)
- data formats for export, including metadata and configurations
- support from the provider during switching
- charges for switching and data transfer
- erasure including backups, with proof
- terms of commitments and discount models
Common misconceptions
| Misconception | Correct is |
|---|---|
| "Egress during the move makes the exit unaffordable." | AWS, Azure and Google Cloud waive it when leaving, with conditions. From 12 January 2027 switching charges are prohibited under the Data Act. |
| "The Data Act solves lock-in." | It secures deadlines, data access and charges. Proprietary services still have to be rebuilt. |
| "Multi-cloud is an exit strategy." | Only with portable building blocks. Otherwise it creates two dependencies. |
| "An exit means everything at once." | Partial exit and moving in waves are the norm. |
| "European providers are always cheaper." | Usually by a wide margin for traffic, not for every configuration. It comes down to comparing specific configurations. |
| "An EU region protects against US access." | Under the CLOUD Act, the provider's control counts, not the storage location. |
Our approach at WZ-IT
WZ-IT supports the cloud exit from the first cost assessment to operation in Germany. Every step has a defined result.
- Free cloud cost analysis. In the cloud cost analysis you upload your cloud bill with sensitive details redacted. You receive the analysis by email.
- Cloud Exit Check. The Cloud Exit Check costs from EUR 1,490 net. The result is the cost picture with today's and future running costs and the one-off costs of the move, the target architecture per workload, the migration path in waves and a fixed-price quote for the migration. If a partial exit or keeping individual services fits better, the result says so. The amount is credited towards the migration if you commission it within 6 months on the same topic.
- Migration. Moving in waves with parallel operation and a fallback plan, for example from AWS to Hetzner, Azure to Hetzner or Google Cloud to Hetzner.
- Operation. On request we operate the target environment through Managed Operations with updates, backups and monitoring.
Further guides
- Public internet egress costs, AWS, Azure, GCP and Hetzner compared.
- AWS S3 to Hetzner Object Storage, transferring object storage with rclone.
- AWS RDS PostgreSQL to Hetzner, moving databases with pg_dump.
- MinIO successor, S3-compatible storage for self-hosting.
- Hetzner price increase June 2026, what changed for cloud servers.
- Migration, all WZ-IT migration routes.
Plan your cloud exit before you need it. We analyse bill and services, show dependencies, target architecture and costs, and provide a fixed-price quote for the migration. Book a free initial consultation
Sources
- EUR-Lex, Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 (Data Act)
- AWS News Blog, free data transfer out to internet when moving out of AWS
- Microsoft Learn, cancel your Azure subscription
- Google Cloud, exit cloud
- AWS, EC2 on-demand pricing
- AWS, Savings Plans FAQ
- Azure, bandwidth pricing
- Hetzner Docs, traffic
- Hetzner Docs, cloud billing FAQ
- Hetzner Docs, price adjustment
- BSI, UP KRITIS: recommendations on preparing an exit strategy for cloud services (German)
- BSI, C5:2020 criteria catalogue (German)
- 18 U.S.C. § 2713, Legal Information Institute
Plan your cloud exit, with a cost picture and migration path
We analyse your cloud bill and services, show dependencies and target architecture, and provide a fixed-price quote for the migration to Germany.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to important questions about this topic
A documented plan for how a business retrieves data and applications from a cloud service or moves them to another provider: with a cost picture, dependencies, target architecture, process and the contractual rights when switching. An exit strategy does not mean moving right away. It ensures that a move remains plannable.
There is no flat amount. Costs consist of five blocks: data transfer during the move (egress), parallel operation of the old and new environment, rebuilding services without a direct equivalent, ongoing commitments such as Savings Plans, and operating the target environment. These are weighed against future running costs. A cost picture for your environment is built from the bill and the service list.
All three offer programmes with free data transfer when leaving, with different conditions (as of October 2026). AWS: request through support, credits, 90 days for the move, the account does not have to be closed. Azure: request through support, credits for at most 60 days, then cancel all subscriptions. Google Cloud: exit notice, migration of all workloads and data, and termination of the agreement for the service. From 12 January 2027 the EU Data Act prohibits switching charges, including egress when switching.
Chapter VI of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 (Articles 23 to 31) has applied since 12 September 2025. Contracts must provide, among other things, a maximum notice period of two months to initiate switching, a transitional period of at most 30 calendar days and a data retrieval period of at least 30 calendar days. Until 12 January 2027 switching charges may only cover the direct costs; after that they are prohibited. Not legal advice.
The Data Act gives customers rights when switching but does not oblige them to have an exit strategy. The German BSI, together with UP KRITIS, has published recommendations on preparing an exit strategy when using cloud services (2022). Whether sector-specific rules require an exit strategy should be clarified with your compliance or legal advisers.
Not on its own. Using the same proprietary services at two providers creates two dependencies instead of one. Multi-cloud only works with portable building blocks such as virtual machines, containers, PostgreSQL and S3-compatible storage. For parallel use, providers may still charge data egress fees to pass on their costs under Article 34(2) of the Data Act.
Services without an open standard behind them: proprietary databases such as DynamoDB or Cosmos DB, serverless functions with many triggers, queues and event services, and identity and permission models such as AWS IAM. Virtual machines, PostgreSQL, MySQL, containers and S3-compatible object storage, by contrast, move easily.
No. A partial exit often makes sense: servers, databases and storage move, while individual services such as a global CDN stay with the hyperscaler for now. Note that the exit programmes of Azure and Google Cloud are tied to cancelling all subscriptions or migrating all workloads respectively.
They continue and must be paid. AWS Savings Plans and Reserved Instances have terms of one or three years, Database Savings Plans one year. The timing of the exit is therefore aligned with the terms, or the affected services move last.
Not automatically, and European providers change prices too. Hetzner raised prices for new cloud servers on 15 June 2026, for example CPX22 from EUR 7.99 to EUR 19.49 net per month; existing servers keep their old price. For traffic, however, the difference is large: Hetzner cloud servers include 20 TB of outgoing traffic in the EU, while AWS charges USD 0.09 per GB in Frankfurt after 100 free GB.
Not on its own. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2713, providers must disclose data in their possession, custody or control regardless of whether it is stored inside or outside the United States. What counts is the provider's control, not the storage location. Not legal advice.
With the bill and the service list. WZ-IT's free cloud cost analysis evaluates an uploaded cloud bill. The Cloud Exit Check from EUR 1,490 net delivers cost picture, target architecture, migration path and a fixed-price quote for the migration. It is credited if you commission the migration within 6 months on the same topic.
Written by
Timo Wevelsiep
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder of WZ-IT. Specialized in cloud infrastructure, open-source platforms and managed services for SMEs and enterprise clients worldwide.
LinkedInLet's Talk About Your Idea
Whether a specific IT challenge or just an idea - we look forward to the exchange. In a brief conversation, we'll evaluate together if and how your project fits with WZ-IT.
Arrange a callback
Companies worldwide trust WZ-IT
