Why this exists — EuropeanApps

Who is behind this

Matthis Duarte

Organic growth & SEO, 10+ years · Valencia, Spain

I have spent more than ten years in organic growth and SEO, which mostly means reading pricing pages for a living and noticing when the number quietly moves.

I use a lot of what this site covers myself — banking apps, VPNs, note-taking tools, streaming, language apps — and most of the time I had no idea which company was actually behind them, where they were based, or how they stacked up on their own terms. The European tech conversation online is mostly slogans; I wanted a place with actual numbers and actual names instead.

So that is what this is: what a European app or piece of software actually costs, who makes it, how it scores on its own merits, and where it genuinely falls short — never dressed up, and never measured against a product it is not trying to be.

Writes every entryChecks every price Answers the correction emails

The problem

European tech sovereignty has been front-page news for months — the surveys, the “I survived 72 hours without US tech” pieces, the political speeches. Alongside that, several directories now list European alternatives: infrastructure, cloud, compliance tools, mostly aimed at businesses. What none of them do is put a number on the page. Not one euro figure, not one date, not one source. You are told an app is European and told to feel better about it, and that is where the information stops.

This site adds the number, the score, and the name behind it. What a European app or piece of software actually costs — checked on a stated date, sourced, and never dressed up as cheaper than it is — how it scores out of 100 on its own merits, and which company actually makes it, often a small startup, sometimes a much larger one.

30Countries in scope: the 27 EU states, plus the UK, Switzerland and Norway

10Personal categories, business tools excluded

A–ZListed alphabetically, never ranked against each other

0Listings for sale

What you get on every page

Every entry is built the same way, so once you have read one you know where to look on all of them.

Where it’s actually based The country where the company is incorporated, and the country of its hosting if that differs — checked, not assumed from a .eu domain or a flag in a logo.

The real yearly price Read off the vendor’s own pricing page, dated, and always the renewal price rather than an introductory offer — with the source page linked next to the date, so the number is never just asserted.

An honest verdict, and a score A plain-language read on how much of the job the app actually does, backed by a score out of 100 on five criteria — judged on what the app itself offers, never against another entry, and never a reason one tool is listed above another.

Where it breaks The honest list of what it does not do yet. Being European is not a reason to skip this part.

A correction button Prices move and companies get acquired. One click opens a prefilled email and corrections are handled before any new content.

What this site is not

It is not anti-American and it is not a campaign. Gmail, Dropbox and the rest are good products used by billions of people, and nothing here disparages them. It is also not political commentary — the site reports on origin and price, not on EU policy, and carries no official affiliation of any kind with the European Union. See our manifesto for what that commits us to.

Scope

Personal apps and software only, in ten categories: VPN and privacy, browsers and search, messaging, maps and mobility, music and audio, banking and money, AI and translation, photo and creative tools, health and wellness, and education and learning. Nothing aimed at running a business, a website, or an online store — that territory is already covered by the B2B-focused directories this site deliberately does not compete with.

“European” means the EU, the UK, Switzerland and Norway, with the country shown on every entry rather than folded into one label — see how we check for what that verification involves. A company that is genuinely majority-owned from outside that footprint today is not listed as a European alternative, whatever country it was founded in or how European its branding still looks.

The badge

Companies listed on the site can add a free “Featured on EuropeanApps.com” badge to their own site if they want to — optional, free, and the same for every listing regardless of score. Instructions and the embed code are on the submit page.

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