This weekFacts checked 8 November 2026
The week in European alternatives: 2 to 8 November 2026
Thirteen more online services we checked are controlled in Europe, and ten of them still rely on a US-owned company somewhere. Who owns each one, and where your data goes.
We looked into 21 online services this week. Thirteen are controlled in Europe, four are controlled elsewhere despite their European addresses, and for four we couldn't find out. New here means new to us, not newly founded.
Controlled in Europe doesn't mean free of American companies. Ten of the thirteen rely on a US-owned company somewhere in how they run, from Cloudflare in front of the servers to Bluesky carrying the direct messages. Staan doesn't say who hosts it. Only Bookplate and CodeFloe name nothing but European providers.
Each one gets the three answers from Is it really European?
At a glance
| Service | Owned | Headquartered | Hosted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abfahrt! | Germany | Germany | Mixed: EU data centres, on Cloudflare (US) |
| Balsio | Latvia | Latvia | Mixed: EU, with some data going to US companies |
| Bookplate | United Kingdom (Europe, not EU) | United Kingdom (Europe, not EU) | France, at Scaleway |
| CodeFloe | Switzerland (Europe, not EU) | Switzerland (Europe, not EU) | Germany and France, at European providers |
| Creem | Estonia | Estonia | Mixed: servers in Germany on AWS (US), database in the US on Supabase |
| Eurosky | Netherlands | Netherlands | Mixed: accounts in Germany, search and messages through Bluesky (US) |
| MainDeck | Netherlands | Netherlands | Germany, at Contabo, whose majority investor is American |
| Melious | Germany | Germany | Mixed: EU providers, with web search that may reach Microsoft (US) |
| OrsunPay | Poland | Estonia | Mixed: on Railway (US), location not given |
| Staan | Germany and France | France | EU, by its own account; host not named |
| Stoat | United Kingdom (Europe, not EU) | United Kingdom (Europe, not EU) | Mixed: mainly EU, with Cloudflare (US) |
| Torii | Denmark | Denmark | Mixed: Germany, behind Cloudflare (US) |
| Writizzy | France | France | Mixed: Germany and France, with two US companies' services run in the EU |
As checked on 8 November 2026.
Controlled in Europe
Abfahrt!
Live departures and journey planning for public transport in 28 countries, as an alternative to Google Maps and Citymapper. It needs no account and has no ad networks.
Owned: Germany. Riles Tech UG in Berlin publishes it. Its only managing director is the founder, and the press kit describes it as one person's self-funded project. We couldn't read the shareholder list online, so this rests on the commercial register entry and the company's word.
Hosted: Mixed. The press kit says "No US cloud middlemen". The privacy policy says the API runs on Cloudflare Workers, set to use Cloudflare's EU data centres. Cloudflare is American.
Balsio
Work chat from Riga in which your work email is your address, as an alternative to Slack. It was called BirdyChat until September. It launched across Europe in May as one of the first apps to use the EU's Digital Markets Act to reach WhatsApp: you write from Balsio, your contact stays on WhatsApp, and your phone number stays private.
Owned: Latvia. Latvia's company data shows two people holding about three quarters of the company, both living in Latvia and both registered as its beneficial owners. Investors hold the rest. The largest, Dig Ventures Fund II, is registered in Guernsey and holds 13.9%.
Hosted: Mixed. Balsio says it is built and hosted in the EU, and its privacy policy puts its AI assistant on Amazon Bedrock within the European Economic Area. The same policy lists what may go to US companies: push notifications through Apple and Google, Android crash reports to Google, and website data to Google Analytics and LinkedIn.
Bookplate
A book tracker with notes, ratings and reading statistics, as an alternative to Goodreads and StoryGraph. It is free and open source, so you can also run it on your own server.
Owned: United Kingdom (Europe, not EU). Its privacy policy says one person runs it from London. We found no company behind it at Companies House, so this rests on that policy.
Hosted: France. The same policy names Scaleway in Paris for the servers and outgoing email, and Proton in Switzerland for its inbox and newsletter.
CodeFloe
Git hosting built on Forgejo, as an alternative to GitHub. Private repositories, CI/CD and hosted pages are free for everyone, and paid tiers only add storage and CI/CD resources.
Owned: Switzerland (Europe, not EU). devXY GmbH in Baar runs it. The Swiss commercial register shows one person, living in Zürich, holding all of its shares when it was founded in 2024, and no change since.
Hosted: Germany and France. Its list of providers has no American company on it: Hetzner in Germany, Scaleway in France and the Netherlands, and bunny.net in Slovenia. Visitors from Asia, Oceania and the Americas go through Hetzner servers in Singapore and the US, where the connection is decrypted on its way to Germany.
Creem
Sells software on behalf of its customers as the merchant of record, handling checkout and sales taxes, as an alternative to Paddle and Lemon Squeezy. It costs 3.9% plus 40 US cents a transaction.
Owned: Estonia. Estonia's business register shows the co-founder and CEO holding 49.65%, living in Estonia and registered as the only beneficial owner. The company holds 11.06% of itself, which leaves the founder about 56% of the other shares. Investors hold the rest, mostly funds from Sweden, Lithuania and Luxembourg. The register says shareholders have special rights in the articles, which we haven't read.
Hosted: Mixed. Its data processing agreement puts the servers on AWS in Germany but the database at Supabase in the US, along with Vercel, Sentry, PostHog, Resend and Google. All of them are American companies.
Eurosky
An account on the AT Protocol, the open network behind Bluesky, kept on Hetzner's servers in Falkenstein, Germany. It also has its own app, mu, as an alternative to X and Bluesky.
Owned: Netherlands. It is an initiative of Stichting Modal, a Dutch non-profit foundation, so there are no shareholders.
Hosted: Mixed. Your account and posts are in Germany, but mu still relies on Bluesky, a US company, for search, media delivery, direct messages and moderation labels. Those direct messages aren't end-to-end encrypted. Eurosky calls this a transition period.
MainDeck
A professional network from The Hague, as an alternative to LinkedIn, with a chronological feed and profiles kept private from the public web by default. You need an invitation or a place on the waitlist. Private messages are encrypted at the application level before they are stored.
Owned: Netherlands. Its terms name EnableNext, in The Hague, as the operator, and North Data lists Maindeck among EnableNext's trade names. MainDeck's team page names its founder. We couldn't confirm the owner's name from free register data, so this rests partly on MainDeck's word.
Hosted: Germany, at a US-owned host. MainDeck's trust page says it runs on sovereign EU infrastructure, with its application servers in Germany, and doesn't name the company. The site's server address is registered to Contabo, a German hosting company whose majority investor is KKR, the American investment firm.
Melious
A German platform serving more than 60 open AI models through APIs that work with existing OpenAI and Anthropic clients, as an alternative to calling those companies directly. Many of the models, such as GLM, Kimi and DeepSeek, are developed in China but run on European servers. Ecosia now gets its AI models through it.
Owned: Germany. The shareholder list filed in July (HRB 111794, Saarbrücken) shows the four co-founders owning all of it: one directly with 5%, and three through small German companies with 49%, 25% and 21%, each managed by the founder it is named after. No investor is on the list. We didn't read those three companies' own shareholder lists.
Hosted: Mixed. Its list of providers names companies based in Europe, among them Scaleway, OVHcloud and IONOS for the AI models and Gcore, in Luxembourg, for delivery. Web search goes through Qwant, which may pass pseudonymised queries to Microsoft, an American company.
OrsunPay
Payment orchestration software from Tallinn, as an alternative to Stripe, with hosted checkout and payment links. The same company runs RiskCogs, a fraud-scoring service. It is early: the company was registered in January 2026, the terms of OrsunPay and RiskCogs are still marked as drafts, and OrsunPay holds no payment licence and no funds.
Owned: Poland. Headquartered: Estonia. Estonia's business register shows one person owning 100% and living in Poland.
Hosted: Mixed. OrsunPay runs on Railway, a US company, and doesn't say where. RiskCogs lists Railway's Netherlands region, Scaleway in Paris and Amazon in Frankfurt.
Staan
A European web search index with an API, for developers and AI tools that would otherwise call Google, Bing or Brave. It runs on the same stack as Qwant Search, and Ecosia uses it for part of its results. The first 1,000 requests a month are free, then web search costs €2 per 1,000.
Owned: Germany and France. Ecosia and Qwant announced it in 2024 as a 50/50 joint venture, and we found no later split. Ecosia is steward-owned in Germany. Qwant's parent, Synfonium, was set up as 75% the Klaba brothers and 25% France's Caisse des Dépôts.
Headquartered: France. The company behind it is in Paris.
Hosted: EU, by its own account. Staan says data stays in EU data centres, with EU-only routing available. It doesn't name the host.
Stoat
An open-source group chat app with servers, channels and voice, in the mould of Discord. It used to be called Revolt, and it passed a million registered users in March. It says it is funded entirely by donations.
Owned: United Kingdom (Europe, not EU). Companies House shows one person with 75% or more of the shares, living in the UK.
Hosted: Mixed. Stoat's privacy policy says data sits mainly with cloud providers in the EU, that encrypted backups may be kept in the UK, and that voice and video may be processed in other countries. It names Cloudflare, which is American, for protection and delivery.
Torii
Login and user management for developers, from Odense, as an alternative to Auth0 and Clerk. It has been generally available since June.
Owned: Denmark. Denmark's company register shows Torii ApS wholly owned since September by a holding company, which belongs entirely to a co-founder.
Hosted: Mixed. User data is stored at Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany. Cloudflare, an American company, sits in front of it and sees IP addresses and request data.
Writizzy
A blogging and newsletter platform that takes no commission, as an alternative to Substack, Medium and Ghost. It describes itself as two people with no investors.
Owned: France. It is a sole trader's business, so there are no shareholders.
Hosted: Mixed. Its privacy policy lists Hetzner in Germany for the app and database, Scaleway in France for backups and email, and bunny.net for delivery. Two services come from US companies but keep the data in the EU: Amazon SES in Paris for newsletters, and Sentry, with data stored in Germany, for error tracking.
Checked, and controlled elsewhere
Four services that look European from the outside:
- Opera is based in Oslo. A Hong Kong company belonging to China's Kunlun Tech held 67.9% of its parent on 22 September 2026.
- TIDAL is based in Oslo. Block, Inc., the US company behind Square and Cash App, reports a majority interest in it.
- Booking.com is based in Amsterdam and is part of Booking Holdings, a US company listed on Nasdaq.
- Startpage is owned by a Dutch company, which became part of System1 in December 2018. System1, a US company listed in New York, still lists it as a subsidiary.
Couldn't settle
MapAtlas (Netherlands), myPDF (Romania), PixelUnion (Netherlands) and W Social (Sweden) are all based in Europe, but we couldn't find out who controls them, so their Owned answer is Unknown for now.
In the news
- Six German states can now get a school cloud built on Nextcloud and run by IONOS. A four-year framework contract covers Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, and schools don't have to use it. It is worth up to €67.5 million before VAT, a ceiling rather than a guaranteed sum.
- Mistral bought SkipLabs, a French startup that makes AI code-generation tools. It is Mistral's fifth acquisition this year.
If you know who owns one of the four above, or there's a service we should check next, tell us.