The affiliate information shows that it the website shows mostly / only affiliate offers, and omits (intentionally?) much better a lternatives like posteo.de for email.
Listed vendors like OVHcloud must follow the US cloud act, so not really independent from US.
This post needs to be flagged, this is pure affiliate spam and not at all what HN is meant for. Doubt the guy is even European at this point. An email @ dang wouldn't be out of place either for anyone with the time.
The domain registration date doesn’t tell anything about the amount of effort put in it. I usually register the domains of my side-projects only when I’m at 80% done; otherwise I would buy dozens of domains I would never use.
The domain registration in this context is just proof that the website doesn't have any community value. As for the amount of effort, I took a look at the HTML source of the page, and it looks like the person who released it doesn't really understand the technology he uses, even on a website level.
My opinion is therefore that this amount of effort is not nearly enough to hold our discussion here.
If you want to help orgs who have come to the conclusion they need to diversify to EU services, it does not mean you have to have come to the same conclusion! Also, it's not the same kind of dependency if you get or buy something one-off from a website like this, as if you build your org on top of a single platform/jurisdiction.
They didn’t explicitly point to hypocrisy as the thing that makes it “unserious.” Actually I think a lot of serious projects are a little bit hypocritical, a little bit of hypocrisy is often the cost of contact with reality.
In this case it isn’t even clear where the hypocrisy comes from, though. It’s a service for looking up other services. Does it even handle any PII?
Perhaps they spent considerable effort putting the data set etc together, and subsequently decided to launch as a standalone domain. I wouldn’t take registration date as the final arbiter of seriousness
If this site actually provided privacy-preserving recommendations, there are many of us in the U.S. who would (or should?) also be interested in these services. Sadly, this is SPAM.
Maybe it was added in the meanwhile, but I see Posteo under email. Also, disputable if Posteo is really better, as it highly depend on your requirements. I dismissed it for some reason when choosing and went with mailbox.org, which is also listed.
The information is also not stating that all links are affiliate, just that the site does contain them and some might make them money.
I was looking into Posteo a while back but was turned off by the recycling of addresses. After leaving the service it's available to anyone after a fixed time.
Like the idea of open source but is browser based application is enough to serve the purpose? I actually built one for german market. I can give you my learnings or recommendations if you want.
> This is very good, because billing the EU is quite strict, and having someone get the format right for me is super useful :)
Is it? In my (EU) country there is basically a list of things the invoice must show, without any strict template, even if they converge on very similar designs in the end. Basically to allow branding and alleviate physical -> digital transition struggles.
In the beginning the most popular "invoicing" software was Excel :D
Can you make some of my repeating settings savable? If I have to send invoices to 5 clients I'd prefer to not have to fill in the same stuff over and over again!
You can save seller/buyer info by clicking "Save Seller/Buyer" button. A dropdown will then appear, allowing you to switch between them. I’ll consider adding the same functionality for invoice line items.
Can't we just use claude desktop / cli to generate an invoice. In my experience if you provide some skills and access to some data it can generate pretty consistent invoices. No other tools needed at all.
Invoices have strict requirements and having the model accidentally hallucinate and make an incorrect invoice could put you in legal trouble. Besides, why would you pay for tokens instead of using a free tool?
Why would you knowingly generate invoices that are sometimes wrong? That’s probably illegal and certainly going to be a pain in the ass. Why make a critical business function dependent of the availability of an external service when you could easily do it locally?
The site isn't limited to just cloud service providers; it includes Mattel and suggests replacing it with Lego. Are people giving their data to American companies by buying Barbies?
Thats fair - I think the other sentiment is true in the gen. pop. and it needs to die off because it kind of lets the EU off the hook for fixing their problems if they seem to think they are better than the US in all those ways (see look at those guys, we're way better).
nothing wrong, everything right about a widespread push for alternative app stores.
I mean come on!, users are fickle , and make choices in a new area based on factors that are unknown, except for one thing, bieng able to choose between almost indistinguishabe alternatives, and then promote and defend that choice with a ferocity that is mind boggling.
Otherwise known as marketing 101.
Europe doesn’t do software better - not because it can’t, but because it can’t afford to drop the GDP of a country to build a single app like some of its US counterparts can.
It might feel performative to some people, but Europe just doesn’t trust the US, and arguably shouldn’t. So it’s not about demonstrating superiority in software, but rather showing that there are alternatives you can choose if you want to.
There is literally a story trending on HN right now:
Proton built Proton Meet to escape the CLOUD Act. They built it on CLOUD Act infrastructure. Their website promises "not even government agencies" can access your calls. The company routing them hands your call records to the government when asked. Proton hid them from their privacy policy.
For a specific group of people in the world anything but "USA nr1" is hard to image, I understand. Can the nuanced take be: Europe does it better sometimes? Not the best slogan but you're not in marketing
I first learned when reading about Steve Jobs, how the Japanese never use "quality" in their advertising. Yet people still view(ed, at least) Japanese manufactured goods as superior quality. It turns out people don't judge quality based on what you tell them but based on their experience.
All this to say: I wouldn't stress about it too much. In the consumer space the best usually does win, and people will simply vote with their feet.
Yeah, well, that's how capitalism was meant to work, but mostly seems to have been implemented with various thumbs on scales (which is also true for most of the -isms).
Feels kinda like the thumbs on the scales resulted in the (d)evolution towards techno-feudalism.
Proton is quite the bad example. Technically european but not in the EU and thus horrible privacy and data security regulations while claiming that being in Switzerland makes them trustworthy.
I find it somewhat odd that "European software/servers" has taken off for what is clearly political purposes, but without any clear definition of what "Europe" even means. How can you claim that "Made in Europe has stood for top quality and durability" if "Europe" is defined based on current political allegiance, not geography?
In fact, the domain "only-eu.eu" and the title, "European" are contradictory. Belarus and most population of Russia are unquestionable European, but not EU and clearly not something the author of this website would endorse.
For that matter, Hungary is both Europe and EU, but very likely not politically favorable by the author either. Does that make it not count as buying EU? On the other hand, I assume you support buying from Iceland and Norway, which are not EU (but are EEA and politically aligned). And of course, the biggest question is whether or not the UK counts as "buying European" -- it is not EU and arguably anti-EU but geographically European and aligned in being anti-Russia.
1. The US becoming relatively hostile even to countries that considered themselves allies means that being totally dependent on US monopolies (the TooBigTech crew) is a problem. So the first level is "it's important to reduce the dependency to US services". Doesn't matter if it's in the EU, Canada or Mexico.
2. When you start caring about digital sovereignty, or course it's better if you can depend on national services. But that's often not possible. The next best thing is to rely on allies, and diversify the risk.
So it's a gradient. What has taken off is "we need to care about digital sovereignty" and "the US has already used their monopolies against us, we need to do something about it". I think.
I guess you can make that same argument about USA and America. Canada is clearly America but a Canadian would not refer to himself as American whereas a US national would. Europeans hardly refer to themselves as such but when European countries are lumped together, it has become common to ignore geography and refer to those affiliated with EU membership or bilateral EU affiliation (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland) as European.
Europe is a geographical region, the only question is where does it border neighboring regions (Asia). There is no ambiguity about whether Switzerland or Norway and so on are in Europe. They are.
"only-EU.EU" indicates me their definition of Europe is EU, which is how is used sometimes casually, it's not about political or geographical correctness, just like America First does not mean Mexico First when it comes from the mouth of current POTUS.
No, I agree with him. Everyone knows Russia has territory inside Europe. Does that make it European? Post-Ukraine not a lot of people would call it European. It's just a word at the end of the day, the politics are more important to people that geography since both are made up. Why does Europe end at the Ural mountains? Because we said so.
All Europeans know what is meant by Europe. We just don't agree on it. But it does mean "not US or someone hostile to us" and that's enough of a definition without splitting hairs about Belarus.
I think we have enough petty chauvinisms, there's no need to breed an EU variety. Europe does it better? Dunno, European gov'ts are full of ideas about backdooring, with one of those failing by just one vote recently.
Also the website is impractical, it simply groups brands vs brands without much detail.
I'm still looking for a viable alternative to AWS or Azure. A European provider that can be managed through Terraform and can spin up all the services a standard web application needs: K8s, DNS, Mail Service, Blob Storage, etc.
Sorry, but as an European who roots for EU very much, I found that branding laughable, because it's absolutely not true at all. Those Eurooean alternatives are absolutely of significantly worse quality almost across the board, simply because there's less money thrown at them. It's also making it sound pretty, disingenuous, and adding to ongoing gamification of relationship with the US.
"Europe does it differently" would be so much better, because of the obvious better privacy, openness and standards compliance, as mandate by our regulations.
> because of the obvious better privacy, openness and standards compliance, as mandate by our regulations.
So Europe does it better.
Maybe you just have the wrong metric in mind.
And given the amount of problems exist with Office, Outlook etc. I‘m not even sure if Europe is worse on the quality site.
People are just used to US software faults.
Most Linux kernel development is done by people affiliated with US companies, often by employees on company time. Linus moved to the US a long time ago, and the Linux Foundation is based in the US.
For mail, the answer is to own your domain. If you move away from (probably) Gmail, you don't want to lock yourself into an @proton.me. Get your domain, and use whatever provider you want (it can be Proton, but there are many others).
Even for own domain, what are the risks of choosing a .com domain and US based registrar if your country can potentially be hit by sanctions or your registrar tends to develop a sudden surge of misplaced morality.
Uhhh, I don't think Ente is Norwegian? Yeah, they have an office in Norway, but I remember them starting from India --- Ente means 'mine' in Malayalam, a language spoken in Kerala, South India.
Hi HN,
I built only-eu.eu, a curated bilingual (DE/EN) directory of European alternatives to common US software and services.
Motivation: The CLOUD Act creates a structural difference between US and European cloud providers that's separate from GDPR. European companies can't be compelled by US federal courts to hand over data regardless of server location. For companies and individuals who care about this, finding verified European alternatives is surprisingly hard. Most "alternatives" sites are US-focused.
Technical implementation: Static Astro site, hosted on Cloudflare Pages. 326 pages, fully bilingual. Search via Fuse.js. Product suggestion form via Cloudflare Worker into n8n webhook. No cookies.
Currently covers: cloud storage, email, VPN, password managers, office suites, browsers, search engines, video conferencing, messaging, social media, photo backup, project management, notes and knowledge tools, analytics, hosting, AI tools, smartphones, sport and fashion, cosmetics, audio hardware, e-commerce, freelance platforms, website builders.
Monetized via affiliate links (clearly labeled). Most products have no affiliate relationship and are listed purely on merit.
Happy to hear what I got wrong or am missing.
Also: You can suggest a product on the page, if you got something, feel free to use that button.
First Show HN, first time launching something publicly. I wasn't prepared for this volume of feedback, and I mean that in a good way. Thank you, genuinely.
Ente Photos is gone. Incorporated in Delaware, I got that wrong.
On Cloudflare, I want to be precise because a few people raised this with different arguments. There are two separate problems. Cloudflare is a US company subject to the CLOUD Act. And sdoering is right that the __cf_bm cookie fires before any user interaction, which puts the "strictly technically necessary" exemption under the ePrivacy Directive in genuinely debatable territory. Both are real criticisms for a site that claims to care about European alternatives. I'm migrating to Bunny.net in the coming days. Slovenian company, no CLOUD Act exposure, no third-party bot management cookies. I should have started there. Thanks for that suggestion.
On AI assistance: yes, I used a LLM to help build this. I made every product decision, every category judgment, and every fact check. Ente Photos being Delaware-incorporated is my mistake, not the tooling. Whether you call that vibe coding is fair. Slop means no effort. I fixed 19 wrong prices today and pulled a product within the hour when someone caught a real error. outsidein: Posteo is listed with no affiliate relationship. If something else is missing, the suggest button works. The suggestion form has 67 submissions since this went up. I'll work through them over the next few days. If you submitted something, thank you.
The "Europe does it better" banner is staying. For the memes.
Setting cookies without asking permission while claiming GDPR compliance – chef's kiss.
To be precise: cookie consent isn't actually regulated by the GDPR itself. It falls under the ePrivacy Directive, which requires explicit consent before storing anything on a visitor's device, unless it's strictly technically necessary.
Cloudflare cookies are, at best, highly debatable as "technically necessary." So the GDPR claim is technically correct – but the site is likely non-compliant with EU law anyway.
So, I've looked on alternatives to iPhone. The "little" problem is that if I use online banking in Europe I will not be able to use most of them as a bank required 2FA.
Another funny thing is that they offer as an alternatives China produced phones (most "Nokia" models that does not have anything to do with original Nokia brand), as if supporting Xi regime was somehow better than buying in USA.
LibeOffice as a replacement for Office365 only shows that the site authors does not know what is Office365.
Vivaldi is great, I am using it, but it is built on Chromium, which is definitely not an European thingy...
Nice. There's also https://prism-break.org because corporate clouds enable corporate privacy invasion and government surveillance if anyone remembers what Snowden said.
It's so funny to see all of these websites generated by American LLMs hosted on American clouds. Footer "Made in Europe" needs a change to "Prompted in Europe", a la Apple's "Designed in California".
I'm a big proponent _and practitioner_ of moving away from US-controlled services. I urge people to do so at any opportunity I get and have already moved many things over. Any new project I undertake uses non-US services wherever possible.
But this vibecoded slop doesn't help much. If you want to actually be helpful, contribute to any of the 50 websites about the exact same concept that have been posted on HN over the last year.
> If you want to actually be helpful, contribute to any of the 50 websites about the exact same concept that have been posted on HN over the last year.
It's ironic to call something 'Europe does it better' when all alternatives mentioned are - objectively - worse, sometimes catastrophically worse than the things they are meant to replace.
This is especially true for offers that are content-related. Claiming that RTL+ is anywhere NEAR Netflix is insulting. I love GOG, but the library and ease-of-use of Steam is unmatched (to the point that half of my GOG library does no longer run on the hardware I own because apparently they don't keep updates in mind.)
This is just trading one shitty government for another's. And it doesnt account for data sharing agreements, or even 5-Eyes.
The best way to secure yourself is to find countries that are in opposition to your home country. Example: if you're in the USA, its going to be Russia and China.
Now, find cloud providers in China. Oh wait, Alibaba. Theyre cheap and great.
And, you use THEIR services. It'll be held to Chinese data standards and law. Keep that in mind. But, they likely won't give data to the USA, nor will they enforce USA law.
It does mean the Chinese can see your data. Thankfully, the CCP cannot arrest you over potentially naughty data, unless you show up in China. Same cannot be said if the US gov saw data on USA cloud systems.
And curiously, you can pay at any CVS drugstore to AliPay.
I can not say whether the shown alternatives are qualitatively useful or not, but I am mighty tired of the orange demented mafia currently running the USA. It is now clear to everyone that the clown on top is not the true "leader"; the decision-making process is clearly done by other people, just as there are others who write his fake speeches now. Dementia revealed that problem. No european money should help fuel this insanity from that Epstein cronie any longer. That Epstein network also must be much deeper than what is already known.
Interesting list. One thing I've noticed while talking to founders across Europe: the adoption gap often isn't about features but discoverability and network effects. A European tool can be technically superior but loses because everyone's already on the US alternative. For early validation work especially, the switching cost rarely justifies the gains unless there's a specific regulatory or latency requirement. Worth considering what actual lock-in exists vs perceived lock-in.
Just advertising, no real privacy focused.
You need separate account for service in US vs services in EU
My opinion is therefore that this amount of effort is not nearly enough to hold our discussion here.
(the “angry” comments are so tiring)
In this case it isn’t even clear where the hypocrisy comes from, though. It’s a service for looking up other services. Does it even handle any PII?
The information is also not stating that all links are affiliate, just that the site does contain them and some might make them money.
- No sign-up, works entirely in-browser
- Live PDF preview + instant download
- VAT EU support
- Shareable invoice links
- Multi-language (10+) & multi-currency (100+)
- Multiple templates (incl. Stripe-style)
- Mobile-friendly
- QR code support
GitHub: https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf
Would love feedback, contributions, or ideas for other templates/features.
The project has no backend and is purely browser-based, but I’m based in Europe and developing the project here, so I consider it a European project.
PS: e-invoice is wip (Ksef, XRechnung, Factur-X)
Starting in April 2026, e-invoices are mandatory in Poland, that’s why I’m rushing to add support now =)
I just made my own invoice generator using a json spec and a HTML -> PDF pipeline that wasn't so simple to get going. I might use this!
Is it? In my (EU) country there is basically a list of things the invoice must show, without any strict template, even if they converge on very similar designs in the end. Basically to allow branding and alleviate physical -> digital transition struggles.
In the beginning the most popular "invoicing" software was Excel :D
https://whois.eurid.eu/en/search/?domain=only-eu
MX points to route1.mx.cloudflare.net as well.
they should use their own product before giving others advice.
And is built with Astro, which was created by an American, existed as an American company, and then was absorbed by Cloudflare.
> Europe does it Better.
> Europe does it Safer.
> Europe does it Greener.
> Europe does it Fairer.
> Europe does it Private.
> Europe does it Stronger.
Unfortunately I think it's mostly just a meme at this point.
It's about decentralization, always has been.
It might feel performative to some people, but Europe just doesn’t trust the US, and arguably shouldn’t. So it’s not about demonstrating superiority in software, but rather showing that there are alternatives you can choose if you want to.
Or any of the fundamental pillars of basically all of these alternatives?
Which, by the day, commonly host on American amazon cloud services
https://info.addr.tools/only-eu.eu
Source: https://www.sambent.com/proton-meet-isnt-what-they-told-you/
That's a marketing slogan, not anything that is in the culture.
> This superiority complex needs to stop.
It exists in the US, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americanism_(ideology)
There's one person in the world currently setting the example, with every single verbal or textual utterance.
This website ain't hurting anyone. Good on them, keep it up.
All this to say: I wouldn't stress about it too much. In the consumer space the best usually does win, and people will simply vote with their feet.
It was like this with capitalism. But we live in an era of Technofeudalism, where it's not the case anymore.
Feels kinda like the thumbs on the scales resulted in the (d)evolution towards techno-feudalism.
The specific reason why they want to operate under Panama law is that there's no mandatory data retention.
So it seems misguided to claim that purely-EU-based alternatives to NordVPN are 'safer' and 'more private' than Nord due to the location alone.
In fact, the domain "only-eu.eu" and the title, "European" are contradictory. Belarus and most population of Russia are unquestionable European, but not EU and clearly not something the author of this website would endorse.
For that matter, Hungary is both Europe and EU, but very likely not politically favorable by the author either. Does that make it not count as buying EU? On the other hand, I assume you support buying from Iceland and Norway, which are not EU (but are EEA and politically aligned). And of course, the biggest question is whether or not the UK counts as "buying European" -- it is not EU and arguably anti-EU but geographically European and aligned in being anti-Russia.
1. The US becoming relatively hostile even to countries that considered themselves allies means that being totally dependent on US monopolies (the TooBigTech crew) is a problem. So the first level is "it's important to reduce the dependency to US services". Doesn't matter if it's in the EU, Canada or Mexico.
2. When you start caring about digital sovereignty, or course it's better if you can depend on national services. But that's often not possible. The next best thing is to rely on allies, and diversify the risk.
So it's a gradient. What has taken off is "we need to care about digital sovereignty" and "the US has already used their monopolies against us, we need to do something about it". I think.
Show the world map to a child and one would have a difficult time explaining the idea of continents when they finally come to Europe and Asia.
I for one want Pravetz cloud
Also the website is impractical, it simply groups brands vs brands without much detail.
So you want most of the internet controlled by US? I'm not exactly keen on giving my info to a foreign country when I can pick something in the EU
> European gov'ts are full of ideas about backdooring,
America has an ongoing scandal about surveillance cameras
Sorry, but as an European who roots for EU very much, I found that branding laughable, because it's absolutely not true at all. Those Eurooean alternatives are absolutely of significantly worse quality almost across the board, simply because there's less money thrown at them. It's also making it sound pretty, disingenuous, and adding to ongoing gamification of relationship with the US.
"Europe does it differently" would be so much better, because of the obvious better privacy, openness and standards compliance, as mandate by our regulations.
So Europe does it better. Maybe you just have the wrong metric in mind. And given the amount of problems exist with Office, Outlook etc. I‘m not even sure if Europe is worse on the quality site. People are just used to US software faults.
"View all →" the messy header
the signs are all there
In Europe I like Migadu.
Even if you might trust other products of Proton, it certainly raises a suspicion/an eyebrow.
also, why not chinese or indian alternatives? they're cheaper and oftentime work better
Because neither China nor India are European. Feel free to make your own vibe coded site with Chinese and Indian alternatives.
https://only-eu.eu/en/categories/foto-backup/ente-photos/
Also, their LinkedIn page shows that their HQ is Dover, Delaware, USA: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ente-com/about/
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ente-technologies
Which is interesting.
It also means "duck" in German :-)
Also: You can suggest a product on the page, if you got something, feel free to use that button.
On Cloudflare, I want to be precise because a few people raised this with different arguments. There are two separate problems. Cloudflare is a US company subject to the CLOUD Act. And sdoering is right that the __cf_bm cookie fires before any user interaction, which puts the "strictly technically necessary" exemption under the ePrivacy Directive in genuinely debatable territory. Both are real criticisms for a site that claims to care about European alternatives. I'm migrating to Bunny.net in the coming days. Slovenian company, no CLOUD Act exposure, no third-party bot management cookies. I should have started there. Thanks for that suggestion.
On AI assistance: yes, I used a LLM to help build this. I made every product decision, every category judgment, and every fact check. Ente Photos being Delaware-incorporated is my mistake, not the tooling. Whether you call that vibe coding is fair. Slop means no effort. I fixed 19 wrong prices today and pulled a product within the hour when someone caught a real error. outsidein: Posteo is listed with no affiliate relationship. If something else is missing, the suggest button works. The suggestion form has 67 submissions since this went up. I'll work through them over the next few days. If you submitted something, thank you.
The "Europe does it better" banner is staying. For the memes.
To be precise: cookie consent isn't actually regulated by the GDPR itself. It falls under the ePrivacy Directive, which requires explicit consent before storing anything on a visitor's device, unless it's strictly technically necessary.
Cloudflare cookies are, at best, highly debatable as "technically necessary." So the GDPR claim is technically correct – but the site is likely non-compliant with EU law anyway.
I'd recommend dropping CF.
Another funny thing is that they offer as an alternatives China produced phones (most "Nokia" models that does not have anything to do with original Nokia brand), as if supporting Xi regime was somehow better than buying in USA.
LibeOffice as a replacement for Office365 only shows that the site authors does not know what is Office365.
Vivaldi is great, I am using it, but it is built on Chromium, which is definitely not an European thingy...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_...
I'm a big proponent _and practitioner_ of moving away from US-controlled services. I urge people to do so at any opportunity I get and have already moved many things over. Any new project I undertake uses non-US services wherever possible.
But this vibecoded slop doesn't help much. If you want to actually be helpful, contribute to any of the 50 websites about the exact same concept that have been posted on HN over the last year.
The goal here is to earn on affiliate links.
This is especially true for offers that are content-related. Claiming that RTL+ is anywhere NEAR Netflix is insulting. I love GOG, but the library and ease-of-use of Steam is unmatched (to the point that half of my GOG library does no longer run on the hardware I own because apparently they don't keep updates in mind.)
How it was decided which vendor is an alternative, what were the criteria etc
How can this be kept up to date?
Can I submit missing data, if so how?
This isn't unique at all, so what sets this one apart from the others?
[vouch] for comment, if you have that option, it got caught in the noob green comment auto-flag filter (that is easily triggered).
EDIT: now undead.
I would've still put it in the submission itself but that makes sense
Microsoft Windows has no alternatives.
Apache, bind, no alternatives.
I guess there is still work to do.
Klarna has nothing in common with Paypal, bare metal hosting is not at all an alternative to AWS, PeerTube has nothing in common with Netflix, etc.
The best way to secure yourself is to find countries that are in opposition to your home country. Example: if you're in the USA, its going to be Russia and China.
Now, find cloud providers in China. Oh wait, Alibaba. Theyre cheap and great.
And, you use THEIR services. It'll be held to Chinese data standards and law. Keep that in mind. But, they likely won't give data to the USA, nor will they enforce USA law.
It does mean the Chinese can see your data. Thankfully, the CCP cannot arrest you over potentially naughty data, unless you show up in China. Same cannot be said if the US gov saw data on USA cloud systems.
And curiously, you can pay at any CVS drugstore to AliPay.