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Ask HN: European Tech Alternatives?

I've used https://european-alternatives.eu in the past but I've found it impossible to submit anything there (I've got one submission "Waiting for Review" since July 2025), and I haven't really seen updates in categories/apps for at least 6 months, which is, at a minimum, strange.

I've also reached out to the owner a couple of times (via chat and via email) over the last year and never got a reply.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? If so, is there any other kind of listing you look for EU alternatives to US software/hardware?

Thanks!

EDIT: My motivations are my own, this isn't supposed to be a political or social commentary of any kind. I happen to prefer to spend money in "local companies" whenever possible, and I'm in the EU.

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Switching software [0] which has a repository on Codeberg [1] and an account on the fediverse [2]. It is not focused directly on EU alternatives, but:

> switching.software is a grassroots website, that is trying to let people know about ethical and easy-to-use alternatives to well-known websites, apps and other software. It is specifically aimed at a non-technical audience.

[0] https://switching.software/

[1] https://codeberg.org/swiso/website

[2] https://fedifreu.de/@switchingsoftware

Thanks! I've known about them and have used them to filter and find software, but as you mentioned, it doesn't focus on EU alternatives, so it's a bit more work when I'm focused on that, but they've definitely been useful in the past to me!

https://euro-stack.com/ (which I'm personally managing myself), among others.

Nice!

This is really nice, I appreciate anyone who will give more info out about it, I like the categories too, maybe some more tags would be nice for specifics but it's good. I also like you host in the EU too. I've seen some doing similar that were hosted in the AWS US region.

Wow, this looks really good at a glance and I will take a good look later, thanks!

EDIT: After a deeper look, I found some issues, like there are a lot of seemingly duplicate categories, (AWS [1] and Amazon Web Services [2]), but with different sets of results, which could be solved with normalisation, but then there are many "alternatives" shown that aren't EU-based, but OSS, like Gatsby [3] or NocoDB [4] and I'm not sure what to think. I think that's acceptable, but for OSS there are other lists I'd look into instead of a website/listing like this.

[1]: https://euro-stack.com/alternatives/aws

[2]: https://euro-stack.com/alternatives/amazon-web-services-aws

[3]: https://euro-stack.com/solutions/gatsby

[4]: https://euro-stack.com/solutions/nocodb

I had this website in my bookmarks https://www.goeuropean.org/, but I'm not sure if it's up to date. If that helps...

Thanks, didn't know about it, will look into it!

I generally just search around.

Btw: if you are interested in this, note that it often isn’t clear cut where a company is from.

For example: https://european-alternatives.eu/product/zitadel bills itself as a swiss company, and it might technically be one, but it looks very much like a general SF startup to me (business address in sf, all investors are US based)

Zitadel CEO here :-)

Zitadel started in Switzerland under the name CAOS AG and has still a lot of its operations in Europe. For our US go to market strategy we incorporated Zitadel Inc. which operates out of SF where I also tend to be.

Happy to share more if interested

Thanks for the clarification! Does the AG still exist?

And I think this speaks to my point that it isn’t a simple yes/no question :)

It absolutly does https://zefix.ch/en/search/entity/list/firm/1391256 :-)

The matter is definitely more complex than yes and no... my general stand has been that jurisdiction matters a lot when you store and process data from customers, like many cloud services do. iIt matters less if you can take a software and self-host it.

Pitty that it only operates on Gcloud. Makes it not European

I hear you! Right now that is a constraint even if we have regions in EU and Switzerland.

You can easy deploy Zitadel to Hetzner though ;-)

Great point, including the CEO reply. I know it's not simple/easy/binary, which is why having a starting list is incredibly helpful! I also search around a lot in other lists, like awesome privacy [1] and awesome self-hosted [2].

[1]: https://github.com/lissy93/awesome-privacy

[2]: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

https://www.eucloudcost.com/providers/

While it's limited to cloud (AWS-related) providers, TIL about this, thanks!

I am working on IronCalc[1]. A spreadsheet engine. We are not an alternative yet. As it is not a finished product. But, if we are successful, we should be a good alternative to traditional spreadsheet software.

[1] https://www.ironcalc.com

There may be a typo in the url, it does not work

Thanks, fixed.

for cloud/VPS hosting hetzner has been solid for me. their object storage is S3-compatible and way cheaper than AWS. the only downside is the region options are limited to EU which is actually a feature if you're targeting EU users. for the directory question, euro-stack.com linked above looks more maintained than european-alternatives.eu. i also just search "X alternative EU" whenever i need something specific

Thanks! I'm also a happy Hetzner customer (for 4 or 5 years now?), can vouch for their object and box storage, and cloud VPS. I also already loved learning about euro-stack.com and end up doing the same as you (searching for EU alternative).

I'll use the opportunity to ask what's the cheapest cold storage in the EU? I am looking for an alternative to AWS Glacier Deep Archive.

Scaleway has cold storage [1], but Hetzner [2] also has quite cheap storage for stuff like backups.

[1] https://www.scaleway.com/en/glacier-cold-storage/ [2] https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/

I can vouch for using Hetzner for storage (and cloud VPS). TIL Scaleway offers Glacier, which is even slightly cheaper than Hetzner. Might look into that for redundancy. Thanks!

Hetzner backup servers make for a great restic backend.

Scaleway Glacier... not so much.

Curious about the motivation. The current conflict in Iran once again reminds us of how it;s all intertwined. The blockade of Strait of Hormuz means helium shortages means no chip production, means your EU based alternative is not getting chips so you really don't have an alternative unless you can somehow magically wish a whole fairly alternative supply chain of EU based rare minerals, fabs, nvidias etc

1 step at a time until the Americans wake the fuck up

Many people in EU wants to distance themselves wherever possible from US. It's not an all-or-nothing. Of course people will continue to use Nvidia, Netflix and so on, but if there are European options then many people prefer that.

> Many people in EU wants to distance themselves wherever possible from US.

Yes, but only because the trust was broken by the US. For so long the EU was very happy to work with the US with trade, we both benefited.

Yeah. For me threatening to invade Greenland was a super red flag. I have not cared about US privacy & security laws. Even if people have talked about it and snowden exposed a lot, over a decade ago.

But by treating Greenland...

I see a real shift in the political environment from the EU [1]

1. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-is-crossroads-toward...

Yes, of course. People's willingness to trade with a country goes down when the country threatens to invade.

It's the global economy. It's actually a good thing to promote peace between people with differences. But when one person or group decides they know better it messes everyone up. The idea was that the global economic interconnection would discourage it, now things are moving towards a no trust environment.

Europe is working towards being independent or at least not so heavy dependent, it's a good thing, but in the long term this idea of isolation for everyone isn't great.

Thanks for the question. I edited the post above to make my intentions (and lack of them in certain political and social aspects) clearer.

Perhaps a better legal framework for privacy (GDPR)?

Privacy: the US has laws that allow security services to access all data of all companies that are in US jurisdiction. Risk management: the US government uses dependency on US companies as leverage to put pressure on other countries. Freedom: the US government published a security strategy that basically declares European liberal democracies as enemies. I like living in a European liberal democracy so I try not to support those who want to take that away with my money.

Regarding chips, the dependency is more distributed (TSMC isn’t in the US), and also somewhat mutual (ASML). Software and services is more one-sided.

“Has anyone else had a similar experience?”

Yes. Same here. The owner has never replied to my emails. I have also had contact with vendors who received the same treatment.

To be honest I’m disappointed. I have seen multiple persons linking to that site, but if it’s not updated and the owner doesn’t answer e-mail then it’s not really a reasonable reference, IMO.

Thank you for confirming! I don't understand it and I'm disappointed as well.

eutech.directory

See https://github.com/asmaier/awesome-gdpr-services

wrong thread?

Wrong thread?

thank you, apologies

> haven't really seen updates in categories/apps for at least 6 months

It is going through GDPR review, then permitting, and then a few other country-specific reviews. Check back in 6-11 years.

here is how MEGA movement started in tech( make europe great again), with Orban in charge :)

Orban is every bit as vile as the present US administration (and they spend a fair bit of time fawning over him).

The EU are the ones freezing people's bank accounts and cancelling everyone they don't like, sanctioning people countries for not being woke enough, etc. I'd much rather use US based services or self-hosting.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft all have now Digital Sovereignty positions and crooks of all kinds fill the niches.

Nothing unusual here.

Digital Sovereignty for Europeans is impossible with US based companies

Just use whatever works best for you. Why bother wasting brain cells on where it comes from? Seems like extra steps for the sake of it.

Instead of Apache Server I migrated to EuroApache Server

Its similar but slightly less friendly and doesn't require a tip

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