Automatic scaling of at least one user application to external clouds

Embodiments of the invention provide a method, a system and a computer program product configured to automatically auto-scale a user compute instance to multiple cloud providers while considering a multiplicity of user requirements. The method, executed on a digital data processor, includes obtaining information, via a user interface, that is descriptive of user cloud computing related preferences, including a user cloud computing budgetary preference. The method further includes sensing properties of a plurality of clouds and making decisions, based at least on the obtained information and on the sensed properties, of when to scale up or scale down the user cloud instance, of selecting one of the plurality of clouds as where to scale the user cloud instance, and determining which resource or resources of the selected cloud to add or remove from the selected cloud. The method further includes automatically executing the decisions on the selected cloud.