Building a European digital stack: The alternatives to US big tech you should know

From cloud and productivity tools to AI, communications, and ecommerce marketplaces, here's where to look for European-built options.

For more than a decade, Europe has relied on US Big Tech for the core layers of its digital economy — from cloud infrastructure and productivity software to search, social platforms, and, more recently, foundation models. 

But as regulation tightens, geopolitics hardens, trade tensions and tariffs reshape global supply chains, and AI becomes strategic infrastructure, that dependence is no longer seen as just a commercial issue.  

Last week, the European Commission launched a fresh consultation on open source, signalling its ambition for Europe’s developer communities to move beyond simply reinforcing US platforms and instead help build and maintain the core digital infrastructure on which Europe’s long-term technological independence will depend.

Solutions built by Europeans for Europe are not just about innovation but also about representing local values around privacy, sovereignty, resilience, and industrial capability. 

And when it comes to replacing Big Tech, many layers of the stack, Europe already has new and established credible players, ready to deliver efficient, responsible, and privacy-respecting digital services to European users.

I’ve written this as a living guide that will be regularly updated. Many of the companies naturally span more than one category. Feel free to message me to add your company. 

Core internet infrastructure and cloud (alternatives to AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc.)

• Crypt.ee (Estonia)
• DNS4EU (Czechia) a privacy-compliant DNS resolver alternative to Google Public DNS and Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 — keeping internet name resolution inside the EU.
• Evroc (Sweden) hyperscale cloud
• Exoscale (Switzerland)
• Hetzner (Germany) 
• IONOS Cloud (Germany) – enterprise + public sector
• Open Telekom Cloud (Germany) Public cloud computing service provided by Deutsche Telekom AG
• OVHcloud  (France) 
• Scaleway (France) 
• UpCloud (Finland)

AI & Foundation Models (alternatives to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and more)

• Aleph Alpha (Germany) – enterprise + government-grade AI
• Dataiku (France)
• DeepL (Germany) – AI language models & translation
• eTranslation (European Union)
• Internxt AI (Spain) conversational AI
• LightOn (France)  enterprise GenAI
• Mistral AI (France) frontier LLMs, open and sovereign
• Noxtua (Germany) Europe’s first sovereign Legal AI
• Silo AI (Finland, now part of AMD)
• Tilde (Latvia) an open-source foundational LLM with over 30 billion parameters designed for Baltic and Eastern European languages

Developer and work platforms 

• Capacities (Germany) digital information management 
• Firebase (Armenia/US)
• GitLab (Ukraine-founded, now global)
• Lovable (France) Vibe coding  
• Infobip (Croatia)  CPaaS, messaging, voice, APIs, etc
• Krock.io  (Estonia) A cloud-based media review, creative collaboration, and project management platform for video production teams, agencies, and content creators.

Collaboration and Chat (alternatives to Slack, Teams, Zoom etc.)

• Element (UK) decentralised secure messaging
• Jitsi (France) video conferencing
• Nextcloud Talk (Germany)
• Olvid (France) private text messaging)
• Wire (Switzerland) enterprise secure comms

Email & Productivity (alternatives to Gmail, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365)

• Infomaniak (Switzerland) Full productivity and cloud
• Nextcloud (Germany) Self-hosted Workspace alternative
• OnlyOffice (Latvia)
• Proton (Switzerland) Mail, Calendar, Drive, VPN
• Tutanota (Germany) encrypted email

Search & Browsing (alternatives to Google, Chrome etc)

• Brave (EU-founded, now global, privacy browser)
• Ecosia (Germany) – climate-focused search  
• Mojeek (UK)
• Qwant (France)
• Startpage (Netherlands) 
• Vivaldi (Norway)

VPN

• Nym (Switzerland)

Maps and Location (alternatives to Google and Apple Maps)

• OpenStreetMap (EU-led open infrastructure) 
• Organic Maps (Estonia)

Consumer marketplaces (alternatives to Amazon, Ebay etc. 

• BackMarket preloved consumer electronics 
• Bought (Finland) pre-loved clothing
• BuyCycle (Germany)  e-bikes
• Codressing (Germany) buy, sell, and rent clothing
• Faircado (Germany) A browser extension that automatically suggests better second-hand alternatives when you shop online
• Liki24 (Ukraine) pharmaceutical, health and wellness products
• NOLD (UK) pre-loved clothing 
• OnBuy (UK)  retail marketplace 
• Swappie (Finland) refurbishes and resells iPhones and iPads. 
• Uphavin formerly El Green Mall) Germany ecofriendly marketplace
• Valyuu (The Netherlands) preloved consumer electronics
• Vinted (Lithuania) preloved clothing, goods and more

Social & Content Platforms (altneratives to X, Meta, YouTube etc)

• Daily motion (France) YouTube alternative 
• Lemmy  Reddit alternative
• Mastodon (Germany)
• Open Vibe (Czechia) 
• PeerTube (France) YouTube alternative  

Consumer hardware

• Nothing (UK) Smartphones, headphones, earbuds and more
• Murena (France) 
• Fairphone (The Netherlands)  Repairable smartphones and accessories

Speaking of sovereign tech, I also want to do a call out to the open-source world’s most successful government interventions: the German Sovereign Tech Agency. 

Through its Sovereign Tech Fund, a public-sector investment initiative launched in October 2022 and managed by the Agency as a subsidiary of SPRIND under the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Germany has created a blueprint for how states can strategically support digital sovereignty at the infrastructure layer. 

Financed by the federal government and operating under public procurement law, the fund targets foundational open-source base technologies: the low-level libraries, tools, protocols, and frameworks that underpin most of today’s digital systems. 

In its first two years alone, it invested €23 million across more than 60 projects worldwide, treating open digital infrastructure not as a by-product of innovation, but as a critical public good.