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Most "EU alternatives" lists stop at the name. I built one that doesn't. (feddit.uk)

submitted 5 hours ago* (last edited 14 minutes ago) by aleksandrs@feddit.uk to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk

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I know there are a dozen of different "EU Alternatives" websites/catalogs already and some of them are actually great for discovering European brands and software. But they never show you what's inside: you only get a name, a logo, a few lines long pitch and then you're on your own.

So after doing some due diligence I've built a more detailed one. Whether you just want a European Dropbox/Google Analytics/1Password etc or you need to know your customers' data won't leave the EU, the idea is the same: give you what you need after the name, not just the name.

Two features I have that surface-level lists do not:

I show the exposure, not just the "European" label. That word hides the part that matters. A company can have a Berlin office, a "hosted in the EU" banner, and still route your data through a US analytics provider or sit on US-owned cloud - at which point US law reaches it regardless of where the rack is. So for every listing I check, and link the source for:

Where the data is actually hosted - the data-centre region, not the HQ on the about page.
The sub-processor list - the one nobody reads. Pretty EU hosting page up front, US tooling quietly in the DPA annex.
CLOUD Act exposure - US parent or US hyperscaler storage means US jurisdiction, full stop.
Who owns the company - "EU-founded, US-funded" is a different animal from "EU-owned". Ownership and hosting are shown as separate signals so you decide which one you care about.

A proper feature matrix. Not "here are five alternatives, good luck" - an actual side-by-side, so you can see which tool genuinely replaces the US one feature-for-feature and which is wishful thinking.

Everything is from public sources only - the vendor's own DPA, sub-processors page, the company registry, legal notice etc. Each point has a link to original page and last verification date. Vendor's self-attestation is not taken on faith.

One number that fell out of doing this for more than 200 tools: a little more than 30% are completely clear of US Cloud Act exposure with no US parent and no significat sub-processors.

On money: the site earns nothing right now. There are a couple of affiliate links added already and it's disclosed everywhere they appear plus listed in full on the transparency page. That's the whole monetisation plan: affiliate links, nothing hidden. Listing order is editorial - no commission logic anywhere in how stuff is sorted.

What I would be happy to hear from you: what's missing? Did I get any assessments wrong? If you see something - let me know and I will fix it right away.

Disclaimer: I'm affiliated. I built and run this site. It currently has a couple of affiliate links live; how it's funded is documented in full at https://euvetted.com/transparency

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[-] dandi8@fedia.io 3 points 29 minutes ago

On the one hand, list of EU alternatives.

On the other hand, obviously AI generated.

[-] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 19 minutes ago

Em—–-dash, babyyy

[-] Sparrow_1029@programming.dev 1 points 14 minutes ago

Though it's code is hosted on Github, this application is developed and maintained by several NRENs across Europe.

Filesender is maybe an alternative to WeTransfer?

BSD license and self-hostable

[-] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 34 minutes ago

Even for an Aussie like me, this is incredibly useful for trying to disconnect from US infrastructure as much as possible.

If you ever get the time to find and vet an EU alternative to Ko-Fi - I would love to send a few dollarbucks your way.

[-] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 2 points 54 minutes ago

I was checking Internxt and they cheapest plan is 10e /month (after the first month). Where did you get 4?

[-] Valar_Morghulis@jlai.lu 1 points 1 hour ago

Hi, thanks for your work. Would Heylogin qualify under password manager ?

[-] muzzle@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 hours ago

What would be interesting to me is to select a few services I use and find the platforms that allow me too replace all (or the majority) of them.

[-] aleksandrs@feddit.uk 3 points 1 hour ago

Yeah, that is a great feature, I would use it myself.

There's two sides to it really: one is finding a single EU platform that swallows a few of your tools at once (Proton covers mail, calendar, drive, pass and VPN in one account; Infomaniak's kSuite is close to a Workspace replacement) and the other is just building a clean EU bundle across your whole stack.

I've got curated "stacks" pages that do a rough static version, but the tick-your-tools-and-see-what-covers-them thing isn't built yet. Probably the version people would actually use though. Will definitely build it soon.

[-] sidebro@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

This is a very nice site! One VPN that's missing is the finnish F-Secure VPN https://www.f-secure.com/en/vpn

[-] aleksandrs@feddit.uk 2 points 1 hour ago

Thank you! Will review that one

[-] IratePirate@feddit.org 6 points 3 hours ago

Thanks for the work you've put into this. It does look nice and provides lots of information one might want to have before deciding on a product.

That said, I've found an inaccuracy with KeePass. The comparison claims that, unlike the other password managers, Keepass is unavailable for mobile. Technically, that's true for KeepassXC (the most polished Keepass fork). However, with KeepassDX, there's definitely a very polished Android app (though under a different name), and apparently, iOS apps exist too.

[-] aleksandrs@feddit.uk 2 points 58 minutes ago

Good catch, thanks. The listing is KeePassXC specifically and that fork really is desktop-onlyб so the "no mobile" is technically true for that one app. But you're right that it reads wrong in a comparison: the whole point of KeePassXC is the local .kdbx file, and that opens fine in mobile apps like KeePassDX on Android or Strongbox/KeePassium on iOS. So the KeePass approach does have mobile, even if this app doesn't ship it.

I'll fix the wording so it doesn't imply you're stuck on desktop. Thanks for flagging it.

[-] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 hour ago

I mean, it's open source software and someone ported it, so there's a client, simple as.

[-] Bonifratz@piefed.zip 9 points 4 hours ago

Looks nice, good job. I was planning to look at VPNs soon and will refer back to this.

In case you ever want to include gaming as a category, make sure to list lichess.org as an alternative to chess.com. It is precisely what people using a site like this are looking for: Fully EU-owned and EU-hosted, open source, free of ads and trackers etc.

[-] aleksandrs@feddit.uk 2 points 3 hours ago

Thank you! Yes, I am currently working on expanding categories. Currently it has more business related stuff but that's not the only direction I am planing.

[-] aleksandrs@feddit.uk 19 points 4 hours ago

A few things that didn't fit in the post: The hardest part wasn't finding EU tools. It was going through the sub-processor lists. Plenty of vendors publish a nice "hosted in the EU" page, then quietly list a US analytics, support, or infrastructure provider in the DPA annex. That's why I treat the sub-processor list as more telling than the hosting claim itself.

So a question for you: which category do you most wish had a genuinely clean option? And which tool are you still stuck using? That's exactly the gap I want to fill next.

[-] birdwing 4 points 3 hours ago

Praise be for the transparency!

[-] TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id 4 points 4 hours ago

Good job.

[-] aleksandrs@feddit.uk 3 points 3 hours ago

Thank you!

[-] mote@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 hours ago

Nice work! A question and a request:

ref: https://euvetted.com/compare?p=hetzner%2Covhcloud

(q) Looking at the Cloud & Hosting category, I don't see a distinction for regional datacenters; for instance OVHcloud has a US counterpart and US datacenters (and Canada) along with all their EU stuff. Just sort of asking how that worked out in your investigations... even if it's just Canada, it's not in the EU yet. :) But more realistically say... Helsinki vs. UK or something.

(r) One of the things I spent time on but I don't see reflected - Domain Registrars and DNS Hosting. I used the ICANN official list myself and just clicked a lot, and for DNS I found basically CouldNS, Bunny.net and Gcore.com as the "EU" (not sure if EU or general Europe). [1]

Bunny and Gcore are Cloudflare competitors so it's no small work to build a full set of data like you have done for others, they all offer a lot of products under one umbrella. But CloudNS isn't so it's a crossover area between different types of companies based on singular.. features offered?

[1] side comment, it might be interesting to see a mapping of domain TLDs - it's well known about who owns/controls net. com, org but I think few realize that a lot of these new TLDs are all owned by single megacorps when you dig into Wikipedia etc. Your precious .dev is owned by Google.

[-] aleksandrs@feddit.uk 2 points 1 hour ago

Thanks for digging in properly, this is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for!

On the data centre thing - yes, fair point. Right now each listing has one hosting country, the EU region I checked, not the full "every region this vendor runs." So for OVH I've got the EU side, but I'm not flagging that you could spin up in their US or Canada region by accident. Should fix that. Two things that help though: I keep ownership and hosting separate on purpose: OVH's French, so even their US datacentres sit under a French parent, which is a different animal from a US company that just offers an EU region. And EU/EEA is the actual bar for me, not "Europe" loosely - UK and Canada don't count even though everyone lumps them in.

DNS and registrars - yeah, not there, blind spot. Part of it is what you said: Bunny and Gcore are umbrella shops where DNS is one product of twenty, so they don't slot in cleanly. CloudNS is the easy one. If you've still got the registrar list you clicked through, I'd take it and I'd want to check who actually owns what before listing, Gcore especially.

TLD ownership is a great shout though. "Your precious .dev is Google's" most people have no clue. I already do write-ups like that (did one on CLOUD Act exposure), so mapping the new gTLDs fits perfectly. Might build it.

[-] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 2 points 3 hours ago

Really nice work! Good job.

One thing I miss, is which payment options they support. You are mostly forced to use VISA or Mastercard.

[-] aleksandrs@feddit.uk 1 points 1 hour ago

Thanks, really appreciate it! Right now I don't track payment methods as a field, so that's an honest gap.

What do you thing would actually be useful to see: just "accepts SEPA / direct debit / invoice" as a yes/no, or specifically European options like Bancontact, SOFORT and so on? I'd rather capture the thing people actually look for than guess.

[-] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 hour ago

Maybe something like "VISA/Mastercard alternatives available"? Like Proton allows you to pay in cash and Bitcoin. No need to go into too much detail.

this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2026

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