Our mission
Much of the internet is now written to earn money: fake news, misleading ads, political spin, and pages produced in bulk by machines. Simple, useful information gets buried under it, because nobody earns anything from publishing it.
Alt Web collects the best alternatives we can find for everyday life, from electricity and food to banking, transport and digital services.
What “best” means here
We look for alternatives that:
- tell the truth about what they do,
- do less harm to the environment, and
- share what they earn.
Cooperatives and non-profits often do well on that last point.
Some examples of how we choose:
- Electricity from renewable sources comes before nuclear or coal.
- An electric car comes before a petrol one.
- Seasonal, local vegetables come before those from heated greenhouses or imported from far away.
- Clothes made close to home come before clothes made elsewhere in Europe, and those come before clothes shipped from the other side of the world.
How alternatives are rated
Each alternative has a page describing what it is, its strengths and weaknesses, and who it suits. We also give it three scores out of five: quality, ecology and the common good. These scores are our own judgement. Lists are sorted by the total of the three, so the highest-rated alternatives come first.
Three languages, several countries
The site is in English, French and German, and every alternative has its page in all three.
Some alternatives work anywhere, like an app or a guide. Many others exist in one place only: Enercoop supplies electricity in France, and it can’t connect a house in Bavaria. So each card carries a country plate, like the one on the back of a car:
- F for France
- D for Germany
- A for Austria
- CH for Switzerland
- UK for the United Kingdom
- USA for the United States
- CDN for Canada
- EU for Europe as a whole
An alternative available in two countries shows both plates. A card with no plate is international.
Every language shows the same alternatives. Readers in Lyon can see what exists in Freiburg or Manchester, even when they can’t sign up for it from home. A good example from elsewhere is worth copying in our own town or community.
Who pays for this
Alt Web is published by BabelCoach, a French non-profit association (association loi 1901) that has mainly been publishing free educational content on the web since 2010.
There are no ads on the site today, nobody pays us to recommend anything, and an alternative can’t buy its place on the site or a higher score.
You can help us keep the site ad-free with a donation.
Or you can share a link to this web site to help to spread the word.
If we ever need advertising in certain regions to pay for the site, it will be as sparse and responsible as possible.