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European Tech Alternatives

254 points by puppion

by phaser

7 subcomments

Every time I see an idea like this (or a politician talking about tech 'sovereignty') I feel sad for the 20-year-old me who really believed in the declaration of the independence of cyberspace.
> Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
edit: formatting

by wald3n

5 subcomments

I don’t understand why Mistral gets so little recognition. They consistently have a top model on benchmarks such as LiveBench and their models are open source. Hugging Face is French, Black Forrest Labs (Stable Diffusion) is German, Weaviate is Dutch, Hetzner for IaasS. There’s AI here. Maybe hardware production is the bigger problem?

by g-mork

2 subcomments

Far more usable (and older AFAIK) site: https://european-alternatives.eu/

by buovjaga

0 subcomment

There are existing sites like https://www.goeuropean.org/
Based on the creator of EU Tech Map having an AI-powered advertising company and the mistakes in the entries, I assume the site was populated using LLMs. For example, LibreOffice is incorrectly listed as being closed source, SaaS and paid: https://eutechmap.com/company/libreoffice

by breppp

0 subcomment

It took a minute to load the map points here, and I was sitting thinking this is an attempt at a clever joke

by karel-3d

3 subcomments

European startups, when they are successful, will eventually end up being bought by Oracle or move to USA. Such is life.

by mathverse

2 subcomments

There are no european alternatives. These are all european companies but they dont benefit the whole union.
If a germany company gets big it will eat other european markets leaving nothing in those markets and then beg Merz for more immigrants to Germany instead of hiring other europeans.

by RobotToaster

0 subcomment

The title is wrong as they only included EU/EEA/EFTA/UK companies, at least according to their faq page. Which would exclude multiple balkan countries and some others.

by jamesblonde

1 subcomments

They need to fix the addresses. In Stockholm, all of the companies are placed in the old town. At Hopsworks, we are in Sodermalm (hipster) - we are not old school money.

0 subcomment

by leccy_wizard

0 subcomment

The Paris addresses are definitely not correct, some may be, but the cluster near the Seine in the centre doesn't match where offices generally exist

by zabzonk

0 subcomment

If you are going to post a link to a site like this, please also say what point the link is making.

by Keyframe

1 subcomments

not all that useful. for a more useful alternative I'd prefer to see companies up from a certain size (I've noticed some small startups on the map) and if the're (not) using aws/azure/gcp/chinaCloud (whatever the names are).

by galkk

2 subcomments

I briefly went thought the list - a lot of hosted systems (probably kubernetes underneath etc). This is not unique or anything.
The list is quite sus ;) did you know that cockroachdb is a German company? :) it’s in the list. And this is like 3rd company in the category that I was checking
https://eutechmap.com/company/cockroachdb
——
On more sad note.
Europe still loves their old money, (hidden) class system and deeply entrenched bureaucracy way too much to allow some plebs to get rich that quickly.
European way of doing things to me feels like fundamentally incompatible with high pace way of doing things in software area.
Personally, I don’t believe that anything significant can come up from places other than US or China. About 10 years ago Russians were doing a lot of “own” stuff (clickhouse comes to mind first), but I suspect that isolation and brain drain will eventually capture them.

by kkfx

0 subcomment

EU tech alternative is FLOSS, not copy the model someone else did earlier and better. As an EU Citizen I reject the initiatives of the Commission, which moreover, is not elected but appointed through a mechanism where the will of the people never plays a part, whose goals are the sinicization of the EU and its destruction for partisan interests against ours.
To have a sovereign IT sector, we must ENFORCE FLOSS and open hardware in no uncertain terms, rather than copying Big Tech.

by m00dy

3 subcomments

we need european chip makers.

by waihtis

1 subcomments

Peak EU mindset thinking all we need is a nifty little map application to find alternatives.
Meanwhile, tech companies are continuing to bail into the US the moment they reach significant revenue due to crushing tax and labour costs (see e.g. Oura announcing their departure from Finland yesterday)
Unfortunately the EU and many local governments have chosen to double down on crippling socialism (presumedly to "own Trump") so this continue at an accelerating pace.

by dantegrassi

0 subcomment

Hi all! I’m the person behind EU Tech Map.
First of all, thank you Puppion for posting here! Was happy to see EU Tech Map being talked about on one the most interesting corners of the web.
A few things upfront:
1) What the site is (and isn’t)
The goal is to make it easier to discover European tech companies (EU/EEA/EFTA/UK for now) and, where relevant, find alternatives to commonly used tools. It’s not attempting to claim “we have a European Google/Amazon/Nvidia” today. It’s a directory that helps people answer: “If I want a European vendor in category X, who exists and where are they based?”
2) Accuracy concerns are fair
A couple of you pointed out incorrect entries (LibreOffice classification, CockroachDB origin, etc.). Those are real issues and I’m fixing them. The site is only as useful as the trust people can place in the data.
What I’m doing in the near-term:
- Adding source/provenance per field (HQ, license model, pricing model, category, etc.) so it’s obvious what’s confirmed vs inferred.
- Tightening the validation rules (e.g. OSS status should never be wrong for well-known projects).
- Making it easier to submit corrections and see what changed.
- If you spot bad entries, the most helpful thing you can do is drop the company page + what’s wrong + a source (official docs/site/Wikipedia is fine). I’ll prioritize the ones mentioned here first.
3) The map clustering / addresses
Yep — geocoding is currently too naive in some cases (a few cities end up pinned centrally). That’s being addressed by improving address parsing and allowing companies to set a more accurate location when they claim their page.
4) Performance
The slow load and delayed map pins are on me. I’m already working on:
- better caching
- loading pins progressively
- reducing initial payload
- a simpler “list-first” mode for people who don’t care about the map
5) “Why not use existing sites?”
There are great lists out there. Some focus on product alternatives, some on buy-European movements, some on OSS. This one is trying to combine “ecosystem discovery” (who exists, where, what they do) with “alternatives” browsing. If it ends up redundant, it’ll deserve to lose.
6) Sovereignty / nationalism
I’m not trying to sell nationalism or “Europe first because vibes.” People have different reasons for caring: procurement rules, data residency, risk management, legal exposure, preference for local support, or simply curiosity about the EU tech scene. The directory is just an information layer. Use it if it helps, ignore it if it doesn’t.
Finally, appreciate both the feedback and to some degree criticism — if this becomes genuinely useful, it’ll be because people here kept the quality bar high.
I built this as a hobby project myself and launched it "for fun" just 3 days ago, and it has really exploded online, more than I would ever anticipate. So, please bear with me as I'm working day and night to improve the site.
Super grateful for everyone input! / Dante

by redrove

8 subcomments

“Tech alternatives” yet a good portion of the companies I randomly clicked on are software services/outsourcing, especially on the eastern side.
Show me a European iPhone, European Microsoft, European Nvidia, etc. Hell, I’ll take a European one man company that can reach all 27 markets.
Europe needs a single market for capital and the removal of legal barriers to extend across the continent, foremost for the little guy. Von der Failen can only add _more_ regulation. Someone wake me when they actually make something easier.

by DeathArrow

2 subcomments

I tried to find on that website the equivalents of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, TSMC, Nvidia, OpenAI, Meta, Broadcom, Oracle but didn't succeed.

by ph4rsikal

7 subcomments

Over the last 20 years, Europe has become irrelevant.
There is not a single European LLM on the same level as US or Chinese models. France's Mistral reached 400M in revenue, but I believe it could have been more relevant if the EU had not slowed everything down with overregulation.

by flobanana

11 subcomments

Using a European solution just because it’s European sounds wrong to me. Sounds like we’ve done this kind of nationalism in the past and failed. There are other reasons why Europe isn’t attractive for bringing these kinds of technologies to life, and investor money is only a small part of it. Especially in a company’s early days. Building a market reserved for mediocre tech solutions sounds like the wrong way to make Europe more independent.
Maybe Europe shouldn’t copy the nationalism, but governments should copy some of the reasons the breeding grounds in the US and China exist. Think about how they got that far, and especially how China caught up so fast.