Cloud switching charges become unlawful on 12 January 2027. Two of the three hyperscalers still publish them as a credit you apply for.
We read five providers' published switching terms against Article 29 of the Data Act on 22 September. Of the two that write no switching charges into the contract, one bills the rest of the term as a termination fee.
Draft, not yet edited. Written by Elin Sandberg, and not yet through the desk: nothing here has been checked against the sources listed at the foot of the page. Do not act on it.
On 12 January 2027 a cloud provider loses the right to charge a customer for leaving. Article 29(1) of the Data Act is one sentence long: from that date, providers of data processing services "shall not impose any switching charges" for the switching process. Until then, Article 29(2) and (3) allow reduced charges, capped at the provider's costs directly linked to the switch concerned. The definition in Article 2(36) names data egress charges as a kind of switching charge.
The date is fixed. What a buyer signs, though, is not the regulation. It is an addendum, a support page and a credit programme, and this page reads those against the two dates.
The insurer this page is written for renews in March
A composite Belgian mutual insurer: fourteen hundred staff, roughly two hundred terabytes in one hyperscaler's EU regions, most of it object storage and managed databases behind the claims platform. Its three-year commitment ends on 31 March 2027. As a financial entity it must have an exit strategy for ICT services that support critical functions, under Article 28(8) of DORA, and its board wants that strategy costed in the 2027 budget.
Two decisions are live. Whether to begin a full or partial switch in the next six months. And whose published switching terms to accept for the next term, the incumbent's or a competitor's.
This page is not for a UK customer, whose position rests on different documents. It is not for anyone whose real exit cost is a volume commitment or a licence, which Article 29 does not touch, and it covers no SaaS. It is not for a customer running a service built to order, for reasons two sections down.
What was compared, and what was not
Five providers' published documents, opened on 22 September 2026 and read in full where they were short enough to read in full. The AWS EU Data Act Addendum and the data transfer section of AWS's network FAQs. Section 16 of Google Cloud's General Service Terms and its exit programme page. Two Microsoft Learn pages on Azure egress. Oracle's EU Data Act Addendum. OVHcloud's general terms, its reversibility policy and its Public Cloud price list. Each was measured against Articles 23 to 31 and 34 of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854, in the Official Journal text.
What was not done matters more. Nobody performed a switch or applied for a credit. We have seen no negotiated enterprise agreement from any of the five, and a negotiated agreement can override everything below. We could not open the Data Act provisions of Microsoft's Product Terms, so Azure is assessed on support pages alone, which may be less than Microsoft has published. We did not open Oracle's Hosting and Delivery Policies, which hold its retrieval period, or AWS Artifact, which sits behind a login. IBM, Alibaba Cloud and the smaller European providers fell out before reading because this insurer did not shortlist them, not because their terms are better or worse.
Sponsorship is sold on this site. None of the five had a live campaign when this was filed; the campaigns file was empty.
The regulation says slightly less, and slightly more, than was reported
The summary this piece was commissioned from said providers may charge reduced switching charges during a transitional period, and that switching charges, egress included, are abolished from 12 January 2027. That is right. Four qualifications make it useful.
The window in Article 29(2) runs "from 11 January 2024", the day the Act entered into force. But Article 50 says the Regulation applies from 12 September 2025, and gives Article 29 no earlier date. The first twenty months of the window were written before anything made them bind. In practice the cost cap has applied for sixteen months, not three years.
The cap is narrower than "costs". Article 29(3) limits the reduced charge to costs "directly linked to the switching process concerned", which a list price per gigabyte is not obviously.
The abolition covers switching and nothing else. Standard service fees and early termination penalties are outside the definition, and recital 89 says fixed-term contracts may carry proportionate early termination penalties. Egress for using two clouds at once is a separate regime: Article 34(2) lets providers charge it at cost, with no end date.
And Article 31 lifts Article 29 entirely for services whose main features were custom-built for one customer and are not sold at scale from the catalogue. The Commission's Digital Omnibus proposal of 19 November 2025 would add lighter regimes for custom-made services and small providers, and expressly keeps Article 29 in both. We have not established whether it has been adopted, and nothing below depends on it.
Five sets of terms, and doing nothing
The same three headings for each, in the same order.
Google Cloud. Now: Section 16(g)(ii)(G) of the General Service Terms says Google "will not impose any Switching Charges", for customers with a billing address in the EEA. That is the 2027 position, adopted early, per service. After 12 January: nothing needs to change. Parallel-use egress, under Section 16(l), may only pass on Google's costs, which is Article 34(2) copied nearly word for word. The catch: the worldwide exit programme page pays out as a credit on the final invoice, for internet transfer and listed products only. We could not establish whether an EEA customer is billed during migration and credited at the end, which is a cash-flow question at two hundred terabytes. Pre-GA services are carved out of Chapter VI altogether.
OVHcloud. Now: outbound traffic is included in instance prices everywhere except Singapore, Sydney and Mumbai, and external traffic from Standard object storage is listed as free. Article 29 has almost nothing here to abolish. After 12 January: the same. The catch: the documents we opened lack the clauses Article 25 requires. The general terms, dated January 2025, make reversibility assistance "subject to a charge" and delete content automatically when a service ends, where Article 25(2)(g) requires at least thirty days to retrieve it. OVHcloud may publish a Data Act annex we did not find.
AWS. Now: the addendum sets out the switching process and says nothing about price. The price is in the FAQ: free data transfer out for customers moving all their data, as a credit requested through Support, with CloudFront, Direct Connect, Snow Family and Global Accelerator excluded. After 12 January: the published documents do not say. A credit that must be applied for, that AWS may claw back, and that excludes Direct Connect is hard to square with a rule that providers shall not impose switching charges at all. The catch: the FAQ gives sixty days to finish the move and AWS's own blog, updated in September 2025, gives ninety. The addendum also wants switching requests "at least two months" ahead, where Article 25(2)(d) makes two months the maximum notice. The law's ceiling has become the provider's floor.Oracle's addendum does the same, in the same words. Google's intake and initiation periods add up to forty-four days.
Oracle. Now: Section 3.7 of the addendum: "You shall not be obligated to pay any Switching Charges." Section 1.2(a)(iii), three pages earlier, lists the Switching Charges owed in the termination amendment. We read 3.7 as controlling. After 12 January: compliant on its face. The catch: Section 3.8 charges, unless the order says otherwise, a termination fee equal to the fees for the rest of the services period. That is outside the definition of switching charges, and recital 89 allows penalties that are proportionate. Whether a penalty equal to the whole remaining contract is proportionate has not been tested. The addendum covers only entities registered and located in the EU, which leaves out Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
Microsoft Azure. Now: the exit credit on Microsoft Learn covers sixty days of egress, excludes ExpressRoute, VPN, Front Door and CDN, and requires an EEA customer to cancel every subscription on the account before claiming. Only customers billed in the UK and leaving UK datacentres may leave a single service. Parallel-use egress is refunded to cost on request. After 12 January: the pages we could open do not say, and both reserve the right to change the policy. The catch: Article 23 speaks of switching a data processing service, not closing an account. A credit reserved for customers who leave everything does not meet that on its own. Microsoft's Data Act terms may; we could not read them.
Doing nothing. Now: let the commitment run and start no switch before January. After 12 January: a switch begun after that date carries no lawful switching charge from any provider, whatever its support pages say. The catch: the text does not say how Article 29 treats a switch that straddles the date, with egress in December for a process that completes in February. Nobody has answered that yet in a way that survives a follow-up question.
| Provider | Switching charges today, per the document | On 12 January 2027, per the document | Parallel-use egress | Who counts as EU |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud | None, in the contract (s. 16(g)(ii)(G)) | Already compliant | At cost, in the contract (s. 16(l)) | EEA billing address |
| OVHcloud | Egress included in EU regions; assistance charged | No Data Act clause found | Egress included in EU regions | Not stated in documents read |
| AWS | Credit on request, via FAQ; Direct Connect excluded | Silent | "Reduced rates" on request | Account Country in the EU |
| Oracle | None (s. 3.7); termination fee for rest of term (s. 3.8) | Compliant on its face | Silent | Registered and located in the EU |
| Microsoft Azure | Credit after cancelling every subscription | Silent; terms not read | At-cost refund on request | EEA, EFTA or UK billing address |
| Doing nothing | Not applicable | None lawful for a switch begun after the date | At cost, indefinitely | Not applicable |
Switching chargesArticle 29
Parallel-use egressArticle 34(2)
Early termination penaltiesoutside Article 2(36)
The verdict, for an insurer that renews in March
For this brief the ranking of published terms is Google Cloud, OVHcloud, AWS, Oracle, Azure.
Google is first because its EEA terms state the 2027 position now, per service, in the contract rather than on a support page. OVHcloud is second, with the least to charge and the thinnest paperwork, and first if your constraint is the invoice rather than the contract. AWS is third: its process follows Article 25 closely and its price sits in a document it can change at any time. Oracle is fourth, and second if you are at the end of your term rather than in the middle of it. Azure is last on what we could read, which is the qualification on this page that matters most.
The decision the ranking does not make is the one this insurer faces first. For a switch that can wait until late January, the providers' generosity stops being a variable: the regulation removes the charge and the credit programmes stop mattering. The commitment ending in March is the larger number in the exit plan, and Article 29 does not reach it. So do nothing about egress before 12 January, and spend the three months on termination terms, which the law leaves to the contract.
That verdict does not hold for a custom-built service, for a UK entity, or for anyone whose exit is forced before January by a supervisor or an outage.
What would make us rewrite this page
Reading Microsoft's Product Terms and finding single-service switching without charges. Any provider moving its credit programme into a contract clause before January. A version of the Digital Omnibus that touches Article 29, which the proposal does not. A national authority, or the Commission using the monitoring power in Article 29(7), saying how a switch that straddles 12 January is charged. And the first dispute over whether a termination fee equal to the rest of a contract is a proportionate penalty, or a switching charge by another name.
Written from
Primary The document itself. Claims in this piece rest only on these.
- Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data (Data Act)Read for this piece in the Official Journal text as published, not a consolidated version. Read in full: Article 2, points (34) to (36) (switching, data egress charges, switching charges); Articles 23 to 31 (Chapter VI); Article 34; Article 50; recitals 88, 89, 99 and 117. Source for: the wording of Article 29(1) to (3) and the two dates in it; the cost cap 'directly linked to the switching process concerned'; the exclusion of standard service fees and early termination penalties from the definition of switching charges; recital 89 on proportionate early termination penalties; Article 34(2) on at-cost egress for in-parallel use; Article 31's exemptions for custom-built services and non-production versions; Article 25(2)(d) and (g) on the two-month maximum notice and the thirty-day minimum retrieval period; Article 23 on switching a data processing service; and the application date of 12 September 2025 in Article 50, which gives Chapter VI no earlier date. The reading that the first twenty months of the Article 29(2) window predate the Regulation's application is this desk's, from Articles 29(2) and 50 together, and an editor should put it to counsel before it runs.
- Proposal for a Regulation amending Regulations (EU) 2016/679, (EU) 2018/1724, (EU) 2018/1725, (EU) 2023/2854 and other acts (Digital Omnibus), COM(2025) 837 final, 19 November 2025Opened for this piece and read only for the Data Act switching provisions: the explanatory memorandum's paragraph on Chapter VI, the recitals on custom-made services and SME providers, and the new Article 31(1a) and (1b), both of which exclude Article 29 from the lighter regimes. Source for the statement that the proposal preserves Article 29. This desk has not established whether the proposal has been adopted, amended in trilogue or published in the Official Journal, and the body says so.
- Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 (DORA), Article 28(8)Read that paragraph only. Source for the obligation on financial entities to put in place exit strategies for ICT services supporting critical or important functions, which is why the composite insurer in the brief needs a costed exit plan.
- AWS EU Data Act AddendumRead in full, all three pages, as served on 22 September 2026 (file last modified 10 September 2025). Source for: eligibility tied to an Account Country in an EU Member State; switching requests 'at least two months' before initiation; the thirty-day transitional period and seven-month alternative; the absence of any price term; and the reference in Section 2.7(d)(iii) to 'switching-related credits or fee waivers'. We did not open AWS Artifact, which the addendum cites for exempted data, because it requires a login.
- AWS Global Network FAQs, sections 'Data transfer charges' and 'Data transfer fees when moving all data off AWS'Read on 22 September 2026. No revision date is shown on the page. Source for: free data transfer out as a credit for customers moving all their data off AWS, requested through Support; the sixty-day completion window; the exclusion of CloudFront, Direct Connect, Snow Family and Global Accelerator; AWS's right to charge credited transfer if it finds another purpose, and to change the programme 'at any time'; and the sentence that EU customers 'may request reduced data transfer rates for eligible use cases under the EU Data Act'.
- Google Cloud General Service Terms, Section 16 (EU Data Act Terms)Section 16 read in full on 22 September 2026, page last modified 16 September 2026; the section states it was first published on 9 September 2025. Source for: application only to customers with an EEA billing address; the Intake, Initiation, Migration and Data Recovery periods; Section 16(g)(ii)(G), 'Google will not impose any Switching Charges'; Section 16(l) limiting parallel-use egress charges to Google's costs; and the Pre-GA carve-out in Sections 5(f) and 16(k)(iv).
- Applying for free data transfer when exiting Google CloudRead on 22 September 2026. Source for: the worldwide exit programme's credit on the final invoice; its limitation to transfers over the internet and to listed products; and the requirement to terminate. The body notes, and does not resolve, how this credit mechanism sits beside Section 16's statement that no switching charges will be imposed on EEA customers.
- Google Cloud Data Portability and Switching ProceduresOpened on 22 September 2026 and searched for charge terms; none found. Not read in full, and nothing in the body rests on its product-by-product export descriptions.
- Cancel and delete your Azure subscription, section 'What data transfer fees are applied when moving all data off Azure?'Read on 22 September 2026, page last updated 7 June 2026. A support page, not contract terms. Source for: exit egress as an invoice-level credit after the move; the sixty-day credit window; the requirement to cancel all subscriptions on the account, with single-service exit available only to UK-billed customers leaving UK datacentres; exclusion of ExpressRoute, ExpressRoute Direct, VPN, Azure Front Door and Azure CDN; and Microsoft's reservation of the right to change the policy.
- What data transfer fees are applied when data is transferred between Azure and an external endpoint?Read in full on 22 September 2026, page last updated 5 May 2026. Source for at-cost parallel-use egress, refunded after a support request, for EEA, EFTA and UK billing addresses, internet egress via ISP routing only, same organisation, CDN excluded.
- Microsoft Product Terms (Online Services), EU Data Act provisionsNOT read. Direct requests were refused (HTTP 403), and a summarised fetch of the Online Services terms returned no Data Act section. Microsoft may well publish Data Act switching terms there or in its Data Protection Addendum. Nothing in the body characterises them, and the Azure assessment says it rests on support pages alone. An editor should open the current Product Terms before this runs; if they contain single-service switching without charges, the Azure paragraph and the ranking change.
- Oracle EU Data Act Addendum, effective 12 September 2025Read in full, all eight pages, as served on 22 September 2026 (file last modified 27 January 2026). Source for: scope limited to entities registered and located in the EU; notice 'at least two (2) months' before the target switch date; Section 1.2(a)(iii) listing Switching Charges in the termination amendment; Section 3.7, 'You shall not be obligated to pay any Switching Charges'; Section 3.8's termination fee equal to fees for the remainder of the services period unless the order says otherwise; and Section 3.9. We did not open the Oracle Cloud Hosting and Delivery Policies, which the addendum cites for the retrieval period, or Oracle's NetSuite addendum.
- OVHcloud General Terms of Services, version of 17 January 2025 (Ireland site, English)Opened on 22 September 2026 and searched for Data Act, switching, egress and reversibility terms; read the reversibility and deletion clauses in Section 6. Source for reversibility assistance being 'subject to a charge' and for automatic deletion of content at the end of a service. Also searched: the Specific Conditions for Cloud Base Services, version of 2 September 2026, which contain no switching clause we could find. We did not find a Data Act annex on the contracts page; that is not proof none exists.
- OVHcloud Global Reversibility PolicyRead in full on 22 September 2026 from its published source, dated 5 May 2021. It predates the Data Act's application, refers to the SWIPO IaaS code, and says nothing about charges. Cited only to say so.
- OVHcloud Public Cloud prices (Ireland)Read the network and object storage sections on 22 September 2026. Source for outbound public traffic included on instances in all locations except Singapore, Sydney and Mumbai, and external traffic listed as free on Standard object storage. The archive tiers carry per-gigabyte retrieval fees; whether those are switching charges when the retrieval is for a switch is a question the regulation does not answer, and the body leaves it out. List prices, not a contract.
Lead Pointed us at the story. Nothing here is cited as authority.
- Free data transfer out to internet when moving out of AWS, AWS News Blog, 5 March 2024, updated 30 September 2025A vendor post, read on 22 September 2026. Cited for one thing only: its 30 September 2025 update gives eligible customers ninety days to complete a move, where the FAQ gives sixty. The body reports the disagreement and relies on neither figure.
- Law-firm and trade summaries of the Data Act switching rules and the Digital OmnibusPointed this desk at the Digital Omnibus proposal and at the Oracle and Google documents. Cited for nothing. No figure or characterisation in the body comes from them.