Cloud Switching under the Data Act: Who Is Covered, the Switching Process and the Deadlines

Nine articles, Articles 23 to 31, carry these rules.

The switching rules have applied since 12 September 2025 to existing and new contracts alike, because Article 50 gives Chapter VI no transitional rule. They bind every provider that offers data processing services to customers in the Union, wherever that provider is established (Article 1(3)(f)). Chapter VI is one of 11 chapters of the Regulation; how the rest of the EU Data Act is built is explained on the home page.

This page sets out who is covered, the four stages of a switch, the dates from 2024 to 2028, the provider duties, the services outside Chapter VI and the six section pages.

What Chapter VI of the Data Act Requires from Cloud Providers

Chapter VI of the Data Act, Articles 23 to 31, obliges providers of data processing services to remove the obstacles that keep customers from switching, to write the switching rights into the contract, to inform and cooperate, to phase out switching charges and to support interoperability. The six groups of rules in Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 are listed below with their articles.

• Obstacles: no barrier may keep a customer from leaving (Article 23).
• Contract, information and cooperation: a written switching contract, information on procedures and formats, and good faith (Articles 25 to 27).
• Infrastructure transparency: website information on jurisdiction (Article 28).
• Charges: switching charges are capped at cost and then abolished (Article 29).
• Technical switching: open interfaces, standards and, for infrastructure services, functional equivalence (Article 30).
• Specific regime: custom-built services and test versions carry lighter duties (Article 31).

Chapter VI entered into force with the rest of the Regulation on 11 January 2024 and has applied since 12 September 2025 (Article 50). With no transitional rule, a contract concluded before that date is covered like a new one. The rules reach any data and services processed by providers of data processing services (Article 1(2)(e)).

Removing the Five Types of Switching Obstacles (Article 23)

Article 23 bars pre-commercial, commercial, technical, contractual and organisational obstacles that keep a customer from leaving. The five customer actions that these obstacles may not inhibit, points (a) to (e) of Article 23, are listed below.

• Terminating the contract after the maximum notice period and a successful switch (Article 25).
• Concluding new contracts with a different provider of data processing services covering the same service type.
• Porting the customer's exportable data and digital assets to a different provider or to on-premises ICT infrastructure, including after having benefited from a free-tier offering.
• Achieving functional equivalence at a different provider, in accordance with Article 24.
• Unbundling, where technically feasible, the infrastructure services of Article 30(1) from the provider's other data processing services.

Providers meet Article 23 through the measures of Articles 25, 26, 27, 29 and 30, which also let customers, where relevant, use several providers of data processing services at the same time. The Commission's FAQ (version 1.4 of 22 January 2026, Q55) describes a free-tier offering ("sometimes referred to as cloud credits") as "a free offer of data processing services from a provider to a customer".

Where the Source Provider's Responsibility Ends (Article 24)

Article 24 limits the duties of Articles 23, 25, 29, 30 and 34 to the services, contracts and commercial practices of the source provider itself. A source provider answers for its own offering: its own services, its own contracts and its own commercial practices. Where its service depends on components supplied by third parties, those duties stop at what the source provider itself provides.

The Commission's FAQ (version 1.4, Q58b) draws the practical consequence: "The Data Act thus does not place a responsibility on any source provider to assist the customer in rebuilding their data processing service in the environment of the destination provider." The FAQ is non-binding; the Commission states that it "should not be considered as representative of the European Commission's official position".

Who Is Covered: Data Processing Services, Their Providers and Customers

Chapter VI covers every provider of data processing services that offers them to customers in the Union, irrespective of where the provider is established, and protects every natural or legal person that has a contract to use such a service. The test in Article 1(3)(f) of the Data Act is the offer to customers in the Union, so a provider established outside the Union is bound in the same way as an EU provider. Three questions decide coverage: whether the service is a data processing service, which delivery model it uses, and which role each party plays in a switch.

What Counts as a Data Processing Service

A data processing service is a digital service, provided to a customer, that gives ubiquitous and on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable, scalable and elastic computing resources of a centralised, distributed or highly distributed nature that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction (Article 2(8)). In plain words: a digital service, network access on demand, shared resources that scale, and quick provisioning.

A second definition decides what the destination must offer. A "same service type" is a set of data processing services that share the same primary objective, data processing service model and main functionalities (Article 2(9)), the yardstick for the customer's rights under Article 23(b) and (d). The other terms of Article 2 are collected in the Article 2 definitions.

Infrastructure, Platform and Software Services under One Definition

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) are all data processing services, as are variations such as storage as a service and database as a service (recital 81). The Commission's FAQ (version 1.4, Q58a) reads the Article 2(8) definition the same way: it covers IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.

The delivery model matters mainly for Article 30. Functional equivalence binds IaaS providers only (Article 30(1), recital 86). Providers of other data processing services, PaaS and SaaS included, must instead make open interfaces available to an equal extent to all their customers and the destination providers concerned, free of charge (Article 30(2)).

Source Provider, Destination Provider and Customer

Switching involves a source provider, a customer and, where relevant, a destination provider, and ends when the customer uses another service of the same service type or other service of a different provider, or its own on-premises ICT infrastructure (Article 2(34)). A customer is a natural or legal person with a contract to use one or more data processing services (Article 2(30)). On-premises ICT infrastructure is owned, rented or leased by the customer, sits in its own data centre and is operated by the customer or a third party (Article 2(33)). Recital 85 splits the work: the source provider extracts the data to a machine-readable format; the customer and the destination provider upload it, unless a professional transition service is obtained.

A third party that manages the switch on the customer's behalf carries the customer's rights and obligations, including good faith (recital 85). Providers that are themselves customers of other providers benefit from the switching rights while staying bound by Chapter VI for their own offerings (recital 91). The other actors bound by the Regulation are set out under who the Data Act applies to.

The Switching Process and Its Periods

The switching process under Article 25 of the Data Act runs in four stages: a notice period of at most two months, a transitional period of at most 30 calendar days (up to seven months where technically unfeasible), a data retrieval period of at least 30 calendar days, and erasure after a successful switch. The periods sit in a written contract made available before signing (Article 25(1)). At the end of the notice period, the customer tells the provider whether it switches to another provider, moves to on-premises ICT infrastructure or wants its exportable data and digital assets erased (Article 25(3)).

Table 1 shows the maximum and minimum periods under Article 25 of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854.

The seven-month alternative needs a provider notice within 14 working days of the making of the switching request, and the customer may extend the transitional period once, for a length it chooses (Article 25(4) and (5)). How each period is written into the contract, with the exit duties of Articles 25 to 28, is explained on the contract terms page in the section index below.

The Chapter VI Deadlines from 2024 to 2028

Four dates frame Chapter VI: reduced switching charges since 11 January 2024, application of the switching rules since 12 September 2025, no switching charges from 12 January 2027, and the Commission's evaluation by 12 September 2028. Table 2 gives each date with its provision, as of 5 November 2026.

Until 12 January 2027, switching charges, which include data egress charges (Article 2(36)), may not exceed the costs directly linked to the switch (Article 29(2) and (3)). After that date, a provider may still charge egress for in-parallel use of several services, but only at cost (Article 34(2)); every application date of the Regulation sits in the Data Act timeline.

By 12 September 2028, the Commission evaluates Articles 23 to 31, 34 and 35 of the Data Act, in particular pricing and service diversity, with a special focus on SME providers (Article 49(2)). The Digital Omnibus proposal COM(2025) 837 does not amend Article 29 or Article 50, so none of these dates moves while it is pending.

Obligations of Source and Destination Providers at a Glance

Every Chapter VI duty sits with the provider of data processing services, except the duty of good faith in Article 27, which binds all parties involved, including destination providers. Under Article 26, the source provider informs the customer of switching procedures, methods, formats and known limitations, and refers to an up-to-date online register of data structures, formats, standards and open interoperability specifications. Under Article 28, the provider states on its website the jurisdiction of its ICT infrastructure and its measures against international governmental access to non-personal data held in the Union where that access would conflict with Union or national law, and lists those websites in its contracts. Table 3 maps each duty to its article, the bound party and the page that explains it.

National competent authorities that enforce Articles 23 to 31, 34 and 35 must have experience in the field of data and electronic communications services (Article 37(4)(b)). As of 5 November 2026, the switching rules are enforced in Germany by the Bundesnetzagentur (§ 2(1) of the Datenverordnung-Anwendungs-und-Durchsetzungs-Gesetz (DADG), since 30 May 2026) and in Malta by the Malta Communications Authority (L.N. 222 of 2025, in force since 10 October 2025). The cloud provider steps are listed in the Data Act compliance checklist.

Services Outside Part or All of Chapter VI and the Pending Omnibus Relief

Two kinds of service escape Chapter VI in whole or in part today: custom-built services not offered at broad commercial scale, which are exempt only from Article 23(d), Article 29 and Article 30(1) and (3), and non-production versions offered for testing and evaluation for a limited period, which are outside the whole Chapter (Article 31). The conditions and the pre-contract notice of Article 31(3) are explained on the exemptions page in the section index below.

No size-based exemption from Chapter VI is in force, because Article 7 covers Chapter II only.

The Digital Omnibus proposal COM(2025) 837 of 19 November 2025 is pending as of 5 November 2026 (Council mandate agreed by Coreper on 21 October 2026, European Parliament at committee stage); it would switch off most of Chapter VI, except the charges rule, for custom-made services and for services other than IaaS of SME and small mid-cap providers under contracts concluded on or before 12 September 2025. The full proposal and its stage are tracked under Data Act amendments: the Digital Omnibus.

The Cloud Switching Pages in This Section

This section has six pages, one for each part of Chapter VI that needs more than a summary: switching charges, contract terms, functional equivalence, exemptions, the draft standard contractual clauses and a switching timeline calculator. The contract terms and exemptions pages carry the detail summarised above. The standard contractual clauses are a draft Recommendation approved by Commission Communication C(2025) 7750 of 19 November 2025, with formal adoption pending as of 5 November 2026, although Article 41 had asked the Commission to recommend them before 12 September 2025. Table 4 lists the six pages with the question each answers.

What Chapter VI Does Not Cover

Chapter VI governs the legal right to switch and the provider duties that make it work; it does not plan a migration, set prices or decide who may access cloud data from outside the Union.

Is Cloud Switching under the Data Act the Same as Cloud Migration?

No: cloud migration is the technical project of moving workloads, while switching under the Data Act is the legal process of Article 2(34) with fixed periods and provider duties. The source provider must support that process but is not obliged to rebuild the customer's service in the destination provider's environment.

How Chapter VI Relates to Regulation (EU) 2018/1807

Chapter VI complements the self-regulatory approach of Regulation (EU) 2018/1807 on the free flow of non-personal data with generally applicable switching obligations (Article 1(7)), because the self-regulatory frameworks saw limited uptake (recital 79). The Digital Omnibus proposal COM(2025) 837 would repeal Regulation (EU) 2018/1807; the repeal is pending as of 5 November 2026.

Does Chapter VI Cover Non-EU Governmental Access to Cloud Data?

Only through the website transparency duty of Article 28; the safeguards themselves sit in Chapter VII. Providers' duties when a non-EU authority requests data are set out under Article 32 safeguards against non-EU governmental access.

The EU Data Act is not the US CLOUD Act, and Chapter VI does not regulate access requests under that US law.