Free and open source software, European alternatives to big tech, privacy-friendly services and green hosting.
Most big-tech services have a European or free-software counterpart, for email, file storage, office documents or maps. Many are run by small providers or associations and paid for by subscriptions or donations instead of advertising.
Posteo is an independent email provider in Berlin: for €1 a month, it offers an ad-free mailbox with calendar and address book, financed only by its users. It is an alternative to Gmail, Outlook or…
Alternative to commercial American email providers such as Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo, which analyse your messages
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VLC is a free, open-source media player that plays almost every video and audio file, DVDs and online streams without extra codec packs, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and more. It is an…
Alternative to paid video players and codec packs full of adware
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Emmaüs Connect is a French association that helps people who struggle with digital tools: using a phone or a computer, online paperwork, job hunting, and access to rights and health care. A member of…
Alternative to being left alone with online paperwork, expensive phone plans and new devices you can’t afford
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Framasoft is a French non-profit association, based in Lyon, that promotes free software and runs free online services as alternatives to those of big tech: Framadate for polls, Framaforms for forms…
Alternative to Google Forms, Doodle and the other free services of big tech that live from your data
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GIMP is a free, open-source photo editor and image creation program for Windows, macOS and Linux. It crops, corrects colours, cuts out shapes, works with layers and masks, paints and draws.
Alternative to Adobe Photoshop and its monthly subscription
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KeePassXC is a free, open-source password manager for Windows, macOS and Linux. It keeps logins, passwords, passkeys and notes in an encrypted file, in the common KeePass (KDBX) format, opened with a…
Alternative to cloud password managers such as LastPass, 1Password or Dashlane
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LibreOffice is a free, open-source office suite with a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet (Calc), presentations (Impress), drawing (Draw), a database (Base) and a formula editor (Math). It…
Alternative to Microsoft Office and Google Docs, with their subscriptions and data collection
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Ecosia is a Berlin search engine that spends all its profits on climate action, mainly tree planting and renewable energy, and has been legally barred from being sold since it became steward-owned in…
Alternative to Google Search, whose ad profits go to shareholders
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PeerTube is free, open-source software for sharing videos, developed by the French non-profit Framasoft, on which anyone can run a video platform that connects with the others, so there is no single…
Alternative to YouTube and its ads, recommendation algorithm and single owner
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Mojeek is a British search engine with its own crawler and its own index of more than 9 billion pages, so its results don’t come from Google or Bing, and it follows a strict no-tracking policy.
Alternative to Google and Bing, and to search engines that resell their results
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The Fédération FDN brings together about 30 non-profit internet access providers run as associations, almost all in France, plus Neutrinet in Belgium and SNN in Switzerland. Seven associations…
Alternative to big commercial internet providers such as Orange, SFR, Free and Bouygues
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Olvid is a French end-to-end encrypted messenger that needs no personal data at all, no phone number, e-mail or name, and never asks for the address book; contacts are added directly, person to…
Alternative to WhatsApp and messengers that upload your address book
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Qwant is a French search engine that says it keeps no search history and shows ads without profiling users, and that is building a European search index with Ecosia; Qwant Junior is a version for…
Alternative to Google Search and its tracking of what you search
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Threema is a Swiss end-to-end encrypted messenger that can be used without a phone number or e-mail address, for a one-time price, with open-source apps and servers in Switzerland.
Alternative to WhatsApp and messengers that require a phone number
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INCI Beauty is a French app and website that reads the ingredient list (INCI) of a cosmetic from its barcode, colours each ingredient by its level of concern and gives the product a score out of 20.
Alternative to choosing cosmetics on the brand’s own claims, without reading the ingredient list
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Startpage is a Dutch search engine that sends your query to Google and shows Google’s results without passing on your IP address or other identifying data, with an “Anonymous View” proxy to open…
Alternative to searching Google directly and being tracked by it
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Software and services that respect you
Telecoms: mobile, internet and email
Culture: books, music, films and streaming
Electronics and home appliances
Search engines, social networks and messengers
Office, paper and printing
News, media and knowledge
Children, family and toys
Cosmetics and hygiene