Polnor.
Sovereign Databricks alternative

The power of Databricks. Plus sovereignty. Minus the bill.

Same coverage — notebooks, SQL, machine learning, serving, catalog, MLflow-compatible registry — but in your own OVHcloud account, SecNumCloud 3.2-qualified & HDS-certified. Immune to the CLOUD Act, no lock-in, ~40% cheaper.

Request a demo →Detailed comparison
Feature parity SecNumCloud 3.2 & HDS CLOUD Act immune Open Iceberg format ~40% cheaper
Why look for an alternative

Databricks is powerful. But it isn't sovereign.

Three reasons European organizations look elsewhere.

Sovereignty & CLOUD Act

Databricks runs on US hyperscalers, subject to the CLOUD Act / FISA — even in an EU region. Disqualifying for many tenders.

Opaque DBU cost

The DBU model stacks its margin on already-expensive infra. Bills are hard to predict and audit.

Lock-in

Proprietary formats and services make leaving costly. Your data becomes captive to the platform.

Feature parity

Everything your teams do on Databricks.

Your data engineers and scientists lose nothing — they gain sovereignty.

Notebooks & jobs

Python, SQL, Spark. Scheduled DAG pipelines, runs and logs.

SQL warehouses

SQL engine on an Iceberg data lake, on demand, auto-stop.

ML & MLflow registry

GPU training, experiment tracking, MLflow-compatible registry.

Model serving

Model endpoints, in your cloud, exporting nothing.

Catalog & governance

Catalog, per-table permissions, masking, access log.

Sovereign by design

Data-less control plane: your data never leaves your cloud.

Cost comparison

Equivalent coverage, human cost included.

Reference light data + ML project (SME-sized), 2026 catalog pricing. Full detail and assumptions on the Pricing page.

€/monthPolnor ×1.7DatabricksSnowflakeScaleway DIY
Estimated total≈ 1,215≈ 2,150≈ 2,830≈ 4,120
Savings with Polnor—−44%−57%−70%
Polnorsovereign · EU
€1,215
DatabricksUS hyperscaler
€2,150
SnowflakeUS hyperscaler
€2,830
Scaleway DIYinfra + DevOps
€4,120
€0€4,200/month

Order-of-magnitude estimates for a reference project (2026 catalog pricing, excluding negotiation/discounts) — not a quote. Polnor figures derived from its billing model (margin on real OVH cost); competitor figures from third-party public sources. Scaleway DIY includes 0.5 FTE DevOps (platform to build yourself). Polnor runs on OVHcloud infrastructure qualified SecNumCloud 3.2 and certified HDS; the qualification applies to the host.

FAQ

Switching to a sovereign alternative, in plain terms.

Is Polnor a real alternative to Databricks?+
Yes. Polnor covers the same use cases — notebooks, SQL warehouses, pipelines, machine learning, serving, catalog, governance — with an MLflow-compatible registry. The difference: everything runs in your own OVHcloud account, SecNumCloud & HDS-qualified, without the data leaving.
Why a sovereign alternative?+
Databricks runs on US hyperscalers, subject to the CLOUD Act and FISA even in a European region — often disqualifying for public-sector, health or defense tenders. Polnor runs on sovereign SecNumCloud-qualified infrastructure.
How much vs Databricks?+
On a reference project with equivalent coverage, human cost included, Polnor ≈ €1,215/month vs ≈ €2,150 for Databricks — about 44% less. The OVHcloud base is 2–3× cheaper than hyperscalers, and billing is transparent (no opaque DBUs).
Is migration hard? Am I locked in?+
Your teams keep Python, SQL, Spark and an MLflow-compatible registry — no re-learning. Your data stays in open Apache Iceberg format in your cloud: no lock-in.
Request a demo

See your Databricks stack run — sovereign.

30 minutes: we model your project and show you the same power, in a sovereign cloud, at a fraction of the cost.

Request a demo →See the full comparison