Question 1

What is a European alternative to a US software product?

Accepted Answer

A European alternative is a software product or SaaS platform that is founded and headquartered in an EU member state. Because they operate under EU law rather than US jurisdiction, your data is not subject to the US CLOUD Act or FISA 702. Examples include Plausible Analytics (Estonia) instead of Google Analytics, GitLab (Netherlands) instead of GitHub, and Hetzner (Germany) instead of AWS.

Question 2

Do EU-based software companies automatically comply with GDPR?

Accepted Answer

Being EU-headquartered strongly supports GDPR compliance, but it is not automatic. A compliant provider should offer a signed Data Processing Agreement (DPA), store data exclusively in EU data centres, list all subprocessors, and have a named Data Protection Officer. All alternatives listed on EU Alts are EU-founded.

Question 3

Why can't I just use a US product hosted in Europe?

Accepted Answer

US companies hosting data in Europe are still subject to US law. Under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702, US authorities can compel a US-owned company to hand over data regardless of where it is stored. Only an EU-owned company, subject solely to EU law, avoids this risk entirely.

Question 4

Which US products have the best EU alternatives?

Accepted Answer

The categories with the strongest EU alternatives include cloud infrastructure (replacing AWS and Azure), web analytics (replacing Google Analytics), team messaging (replacing Slack), code hosting (replacing GitHub), video conferencing (replacing Zoom), email marketing (replacing Mailchimp), and authentication (replacing Auth0). EU Alts tracks EU alternatives for over 25 popular US products.

EU alternatives to popular US software