Ethical Tech
European Alternatives to Big Tech in 2026: Who Is Building Them
Governments, foundations and small teams across Europe are building replacements for Big Tech's social networks and office software. Who is behind them, who pays, and what a small business can switch to now.
8 Nov 2026 · 9 min read · By Sophie
I have moved my business email from Google Workspace to Proton, closed my Instagram and Facebook accounts and, this month, moved my Bluesky account onto European servers. I made each move on its own, comparing one tool against another. Over the same months something larger has taken shape around me. European governments are taking their staff off Microsoft, foundations are paying for open social networks, and the European Commission has proposed spending public money on open source and letting public contracts favour EU cloud providers. Much of it is still a plan. Some of it is ready for a small business to use today.
The European Social Stack: three open networks and a bridge
In June, at the PublicSpaces conference in Amsterdam, a group of open social web builders led by Save Social published the European Social Stack declaration (Mastodon's announcement). Mastodon was a founding signatory, with Eurosky, its parent foundation Modal, New_Public and the Newsmast Foundation. On 3 July two of the people behind it, Michael Foster of the Newsmast Foundation and Björn Staschen of Save Social, made the case in an op-ed for the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics.
They describe three layers that already run. Private messaging uses open standards such as Matrix and XMPP, which several EU governments already rely on for secure communication. The Fediverse, built on ActivityPub, links Mastodon, PeerTube and hundreds of smaller platforms. The Atmosphere, built on the AT Protocol, carries Bluesky and a growing list of apps, with Eurosky as its European base. What is missing, in their account, is a European-owned ‘Eurobridge’ so people on the Fediverse and the Atmosphere can follow and reply to each other. They want governments, public-service broadcasters and civic institutions to publish on these networks and fund them, alongside American platforms or instead of them.
None of the three layers is new, and that is the part that persuades me. The declaration asks for money and connections between networks that already work, rather than another platform built from nothing.
Eurosky and mu: European servers for Bluesky's network
Eurosky is where my own account now lives, and I have written about the move itself separately. The organisation behind it is Stichting Modal, a foundation in The Hague co-founded by Sherif Elsayed-Ali and Sebastian Vogelsang, which grew out of the Free Our Feeds campaign. More than 900 people have donated, and it has funding from SPRIND, Germany's federal agency for breakthrough innovation, and SIDN, the foundation that runs the .nl domain. Eurosky hosts AT Protocol accounts in Europe, so you keep your Bluesky followers and posts while your data moves to European servers. By its own count, nine of the ten infrastructure components it planned are built. Moderation, the part that needs paid people, is the one still unfunded.
On 11 June it launched mu, a microblogging app built and hosted in Europe that works with any existing Atmosphere account, Bluesky ones included. It runs in the browser at mu.social, with mobile apps promised. Since 16 July Eurosky has worked with SPRIND on feed algorithms. A European server still shows you posts ranked by whichever app you read through, and for most people that app is Bluesky's.
I found the limit of this myself this month. Eurosky holds my account, but Bluesky the company runs the app most people read, and soon after the move it suspended my account there. Its security systems had read a change of server followed by two handle changes as the pattern of a hijacked account. Hosting in Europe changes where the data sits. Whether most people can see you is still Bluesky's decision.
The same network now carries Sifa, a professional profile app from Singi Labs with servers in Germany, free and still in alpha. It is the first European attempt at what LinkedIn does that I have seen built on an open protocol.
Mastodon's move to a European nonprofit
Mastodon has spent the past year handing itself over to a nonprofit. Eugen Rochko, who started it in 2016, stepped down as chief executive in November 2025 (Mastodon's announcement), and Felix Hlatky now runs it as executive director. The name and other assets are moving to a nonprofit registered in Belgium as an AISBL, so no single person or company owns the network's best-known software. Mastodon has around 785,000 monthly active users, small next to Bluesky and tiny next to the American platforms.
The Newsmast Foundation works on what keeps most organisations off the Fediverse: setting up a presence takes time, and the default apps assume you already know how it works. Save Social, Björn Staschen's NGO, campaigns for public institutions and newsrooms to publish there.
Governments leaving Microsoft: openDesk, Schleswig-Holstein and La Suite numérique
Office software is where governments are spending money, and where the numbers are large enough to check.
Germany's answer is openDesk, a bundle of European open-source applications for email, calendar, files, documents, chat and video calls. It is developed and sold by ZenDiS, the Centre for Digital Sovereignty, a company owned by the federal government, and public authorities have used it since October 2024. In late October 2025 the International Criminal Court in The Hague said it would move about 1,800 workstations from Microsoft to openDesk (heise). The court had its reasons. After the United States sanctioned its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, Microsoft blocked his email account and he moved to Proton.
Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's northernmost state, is further along than any other government I found. In October 2025 it finished moving more than 40,000 mailboxes, holding over 100 million emails and calendar entries, from Microsoft Exchange to Open-Xchange and Thunderbird (heise). About 80% of its 30,000 office computers now run LibreOffice, a Linux pilot with around 150 staff began at the end of 2025, and the state expects to save more than €15 million a year in licence fees from 2026 against a one-off cost of about €9 million (Börse Express). Its target is a fully open-standards workplace by 2029.
France built its own. La Suite numérique, run by DINUM, the state's digital directorate, covers messaging (Tchap), video calls (Visio), email, file storage, a collaborative editor called Docs and a spreadsheet tool called Grist, with the code published on GitHub. More than 500,000 public servants in 15 ministries use it each month. In January 2026 the government made Visio the standard for the civil service, with the switch due by 2027, and said Teams, Zoom and Google Meet would be blocked on the state's internal network (Siècle Digital). Visio's data is hosted by Outscale, a Dassault subsidiary holding SecNumCloud certification from ANSSI, the national cybersecurity agency.
Denmark's digital ministry announced in June 2025 that it would replace Microsoft Office with LibreOffice, and the minister, Caroline Stage Olsen, told Politiken it could switch back if the move proved too complicated (The Record). Copenhagen and Aarhus had announced similar plans before that. I could not find a published update on how far the ministry got. Announcements reach the news far more often than completions do.
EuroStack and the Commission's Tech Sovereignty Package
EuroStack started as a call, backed by more than 300 chief executives, for Europe to build and buy its own digital infrastructure. On 30 October 2025 it became the EuroStack Initiative Foundation, set up by companies including Nextcloud, Proton, IONOS and Ecosia and led by the competition economist Cristina Caffarra (heise). Its programme has three strands. Buy European means pointing public procurement at European providers and calling out ‘sovereignty-washing’, where a non-European provider markets a service as sovereign. Sell European means joining existing European products into something that works together, and Fund European means moving public and private investment towards them.
The bigger lever is in Brussels. On 3 June 2026 the European Commission proposed a Tech Sovereignty Package (Jones Day summary). Its Cloud and AI Development Act would set four levels of cloud sovereignty, require public authorities to keep sensitive data on EU-controlled services, and let procurement favour providers with design or operational control in the EU. An open source strategy alongside it commits €2 billion over seven years, proposes a ‘Free Software first’ principle for public cloud and AI purchasing, and aims for 30 million active users of open-source collaboration tools by 2030. All of this is proposal. It goes to the European Parliament and the Council next, and the law firms advising clients expect 18 to 24 months before anything is adopted, probably amended.
What a small business can use today, and what is still a promise
Sorting all of this by what I could set up for a client this week gives a short list. Proton, the service the ICC's prosecutor fell back on, covers email, calendar and files, and I have written about moving from Google Workspace to Proton. Nextcloud, one of the EuroStack founders, handles file storage and collaboration, and several European hosts offer it ready to use. Matrix, through the Element app, covers team chat. Mastodon is free and has run for a decade. A Eurosky account is free too, and moving my existing Bluesky account across was easy.
openDesk is the middle case. Until September only public bodies could buy it. Since 23 September 2026 private cloud providers and system integrators can sell it to companies, and the cloud providers must hold Germany's BSI C5 attestation and level 3 of the European Cloud Sovereignty Framework (Cloudmagazin). The launch came about nine months after ZenDiS's first target and there is no public price list, so for a business of five people it is something to ask a provider about rather than sign up for. La Suite numérique is built for French public servants. I could not find a way for a private company to use the hosted service, though the code is on GitHub for anyone with a developer to run it.
The rest is promise. The Eurobridge has not been built, Eurosky's moderation has no funding, and the Commission's package is about two years from becoming law, with nothing in it that obliges a small business to change anything. Schleswig-Holstein shows a public body can leave Microsoft and save money doing it. It also had a ministry behind it, an open source programme office and €9 million to spend, and the tools that would let a small business make the same move without any of those are the parts still being built.
Questions
- What are the European alternatives to Big Tech?
For social media, Mastodon and the wider Fediverse, Bluesky accounts hosted in Europe through Eurosky, and Matrix for private messaging. For office work, Proton and Nextcloud suit small businesses, while governments are adopting openDesk in Germany and La Suite numérique in France.
- What is the European Social Stack?
A declaration published in June 2026 by open social web organisations including Save Social, Mastodon and Eurosky. It proposes that Europe fund three open layers (Matrix and XMPP for messaging, the Fediverse, and the AT Protocol's Atmosphere) and connect them with a European-run bridge.
- Can a private company use openDesk?
Since 23 September 2026, through approved private partners. ZenDiS has not published prices.
- What is EuroStack?
An industry initiative for European digital sovereignty, set up as the EuroStack Initiative Foundation in October 2025 by companies including Nextcloud, Proton, IONOS and Ecosia. It campaigns for buying, selling and funding European technology.
- Will the EU make public bodies use European cloud providers?
Not yet. The Cloud and AI Development Act, proposed in June 2026, would keep sensitive public data on EU-controlled services and let procurement favour EU providers, but the European Parliament and the Council still have to approve it.