STACKIT is a high momentum cloud platform being built up by the Schwarz group, a large European retail group owning the Lidl and Kaufland.
The STACKIT cloud platform targets clients in the DACH region, and seems to be one of the few players who aims to offer a complete enterprise cloud solution, including workplace. For that purpose, STACKIT has established several cooperations, such as with Google for sovereign, secure workplace productivity solutions and with SAP.
The cloud platform is in the early stages from a feature perspective but the Schwarz group seems to be very serious about the endeavour. They are also investing in an European centre for Artificial Intelligence, the Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence (IPAI) Heilbronn.
Features & Services
STACKIT is offering a basic set of IaaS services with a good set of database options to chose from. A unique service to STACKIT is STACKIT Cloud Foundry.
Developer Experience
There are several ways of working with STACKIT. In general, the developer tooling is built according to best practices, by following an API-first approach. New features are always surfaced in the API first. THe Command Line Interface, Terraform provider, SDKs and Console are relying on the API. These are updated soon after the API has become stable.
REST API
The STACKIT API is the basis for the CLI, the Terraform provider, the SDKs and for the Console. As several STACKIT services are in the process of being built up, several APIs are still in beta status. A documentation for all API endpoints can be found in the STACKIT API Explorer.
Command Line Interface (CLI)
The STACKIT CLI is easy to use and follows the API. It is publicly maintained on GitHub.
Terraform
The STACKIT Terraform provider feels and behaves exactly as a Terraform provider should feel and behave. It is updated frequently to surface new services and configuration options. Like with the Command Line Interface, the source code of the STACKIT Terraform provider is publicly hosted on GitHub.
SDKs
As of October 2025, STACKIT is providing two official SDKs. One for Python and one for Go. Both SDKs are maintained on GitHub.
- Python SDK: GitHub and Documentation
- Go SDK: GitHub and Documentation
Console
The STACKIT Console appears clean and not cluttered. However, navigation requires getting used to. For example, it is a bit unintuitive how to navigate from Project level up to Organization level. Also, it is not easy to get an overview over all provisioned cloud resources.
If these wrinkles would be resolved, the STACKIT console would serve it’s purpose. It is laid out for scale and will continue to appear clean even when the STACKIT service portfolio grows.
Data Centres
STACKIT is powered by 3 data centres at the moment (as of 23.03.2025). Two of them are in Germany and one is located in Austria:
- DC 01 Neckarsulm, Germany
- DC 08 Ellhofen, Germany
- DC 10 Ostermiething, Austria
For an overview over data centres and their locations, check the Data Centres Map.
By adding the Ostermiething data centre into the mix, the BSI recommendation of at least 200 km distance between geo-redundant data centre locations can be met (distance between Neckarsulm and Ostermiething is 293 km).
Environmental Policy
STACKIT does not have a public environmental policy. The PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) values of the 3 data centres are 1.5, 1.3 and 1.2, which is slightly below the industry average of 1.55.
Certifications
Security and data protection of the STACKIT cloud service is certified by the certificates that are typically relevant in Germany: ISO27001 and C5. STACKIT also obtained a SOC 2 certification.
A full list of certificates and STACKIT Cloud Certifications.
Conclusion
The cloud service portfolio of STACKIT consists of a range of IaaS services. With their velocity, it is likely that more services will be added soon. The same goes for documentation and other learning material (e.g. webcasts) that seem to be in the making, but not there yet.
STACKIT is a European Cloud platform player to keep an eye on.
Resources
- STACKIT Website
- STACKIT University
- Pricing
- Getting Started
- Tutorials
- Release Notes
- STACKIT Status page
