The consolidation narrative says Europe's hosting market is being rolled up. Public trackers answer with a single global concentration score — around 500 on the HHI scale — and conclude the market is fragmented. Both are half-right, and the interesting structure lives exactly where a single number can't see it.
We computed the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index per European market on the active-domains book, with ownership folded in: a consolidator's twelve local brands count as one owner, because they are one owner. “How concentrated is this market” then turns out to be three questions, and the answers differ by a wide margin:
Mixing them is a category error: a CDN's footprint is not a hosting competitor's market share. Every figure in this brief names which of the three it is.
Consolidation is national. Measured continent-wide, European hosting spreads across roughly thirty effective actors; measured in Oslo or Copenhagen, three or four owners hold the customer relationships.
Norway (3,205) and Denmark (2,572) sit above the 2,500 line regulators treat as high concentration, and France (2,052) and Sweden (1,884) are inside the moderate band — roughly three to five-and-a-half effective owners of the customer relationship each. At the other end, the Netherlands (438) leaves about twenty-three, and Poland (812) and Belgium (964) stay open too. Measured across every European market we publish as one book — .eu among them, and not to be confused with the .eu market on its own — the control-plane score is 353, about 28 effective actors. A single continental or global score averages Oslo's three-owner market with Amsterdam's twenty-three and calls the result "fragmented." Both facts are true; only the national one prices anything.
The continental figure is a control-plane number, not an actor-pure one: the market-power reading is defined on a named market, so no continent-wide equivalent exists — Europe is not one market, which is the point of the paragraph above. It is quoted here as the widest reading, labelled, and never subtracted from a national one.
Concentration also depends on what you fold. In Norway, the customer relationship is held by about 3 effective owners (HHI 3,205) while the infrastructure those same customers run on is spread across about 9.1 (HHI 1,099) — the market is 2.9× thinner at the contract than at the rack. Sweden shows the same shape at half the scale: 5.3 effective owners against 10.5 effective infrastructures. Germany runs 7.8 against 13.6; the Netherlands is genuinely flat — 23 against 25.3 — and Spain and Switzerland actually invert, with more effective owners than infrastructures. The groups own the customer relationships of many brands that still serve from separate infrastructure, so an infrastructure-only read sees a competitive market that, commercially, is not one. Books concentrate silently — brands stay, balance sheets merge — which is why an acquisition ledger belongs in a concentration measure.
For investors: effective owners is the roll-up runway, and it is not the same number as effective infrastructures. A market at three effective owners prices consolidation very differently from one at twenty-three — and the remaining independents in concentrated markets carry scarcity value. Both readings are queryable per market, on the free tier.
For operators: pricing power and consolidation pressure are properties of your national market, not of "European hosting." Strategy memos citing continental fragmentation are averaging away the market you actually compete in.
Every figure here is queryable through the HostingBrain connector. In Claude or any MCP-compatible assistant, this is the whole brief in one prompt:
“Using HostingBrain, tell me how concentrated European hosting is by market: for Norway, Denmark and Germany give me the actor-pure hosting-relationship HHI and effective owners for market power, plus the hosting-infrastructure and control-plane readings beside them, ownership-folded — and the continent-wide figure for contrast. Is consolidation national or continental, and where is the gap between owners and infrastructure widest?”
Resolves to market_concentration (free). See definitions('hhi').
Reproduce this analysis: the market_concentration
tool returns HHI, effective_n and top-share structure for every scope above — available on the free tier.
Named provider shares: market_structure (Pro).
Ask the follow-up yourself. HostingBrain answers questions like this — with the date, denominator and caveats attached — inside Claude and any MCP-compatible assistant.