Alternatives to big-tech services

Open, decentralized, and federated platform for ethical collaboration, privacy-focused, and community-run.

Paid standards-based email, calendar, and contacts from an Australian company, with no ads or data mining.

Opinionated paid email and calendar from 37signals, with a HEY-only client and no IMAP.

An opinionated single-box mail server for Ubuntu that wires up Postfix, Dovecot, DNS, webmail, and backups in one installer.

Paid German webmail and groupware suite with optional PGP and an encrypted mailbox option.

A Docker-based mailserver suite bundling Postfix, Dovecot, SOGo, and a webmail UI behind one config.

Berlin-based paid email at 1 EUR per month, ad-free, with anonymous signup and optional inbox encryption.

End-to-end encrypted webmail run by a Swiss company, with paid tiers for custom domains and more storage.

All-in-one mail and collaboration server written in Rust, ships as a single binary.

End-to-end encrypted email and calendar from a German company, formerly known as Tutanota.

End-to-end encrypted photo storage and 2FA app from an Indian company, with a self-hostable server.

Self-hosted photo and video backup with mobile auto-upload, web UI, and on-device ML features.

Self-hosted photo library with on-device AI tagging, face recognition, and search, written in Go.

Zero-knowledge encrypted cloud storage from a German company, with open source clients and a 10 GiB free tier.

Open-source office suite for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, fully offline and self-hostable.

Self-hosted file sync and collaboration suite covering files, calendar, contacts, chat, and office.

End-to-end encrypted cloud storage from a Swiss company, with web, desktop, and mobile clients.

Self-hosted file sync server with library-based encryption and block-level deduplication, scoped tightly to files.

Peer-to-peer continuous file sync between your own devices, with no central server and no cloud copy.

Open source Markdown note app with end-to-end encrypted sync to a server you choose, including Nextcloud, S3, or WebDAV.

Local-first outliner knowledge base with block-level linking; notes stored as plain Markdown or Org-mode files on disk.

Local-first Markdown note app with linking, graph view, and a deep plugin ecosystem; files stay on disk as plain text.

End-to-end encrypted note-taking app with open source clients and a self-hostable server, owned by Proton since 2024.

Hierarchical personal knowledge base with a tree-structured note store, self-hostable sync server, and per-note encryption.

End-to-end encrypted calendar from Proton AG, included with any Proton account.

Small Python CalDAV and CardDAV server that stores calendars and contacts as plain files on disk.

End-to-end encrypted calendar from the makers of Tuta Mail, with native apps and no CalDAV.

Hosted password manager from a Canadian company, using a dual-key design where the vault key never leaves your devices.

Open source password manager with hosted vaults, browser and mobile apps, and an official self-host option.

The original .NET password manager that defined the .kdbx format, native on Windows, Mono on Linux and macOS.

Cross-platform desktop password manager that stores credentials in a local encrypted .kdbx file.

Swiss-run password manager from Proton, with hide-my-email aliases, integrated 2FA, and open source clients.

Unofficial Bitwarden-compatible server in Rust, lightweight enough to run on a Raspberry Pi.

An open federation protocol for chat, voice, and video, with multiple server and client implementations.

Decentralized end-to-end encrypted messenger that needs no phone or email and routes traffic through an onion network.

End-to-end encrypted messenger run by a US non-profit, funded by donations and grants.

End-to-end encrypted messenger with no user identifiers: no phone number, no email, no username.

Swiss paid-once encrypted messenger that registers users via a random ID instead of a phone number or email.

Independent search engine with its own crawler, no tracking by default, free for users with paid Premium and API tiers.

US search engine and browser with no search history tracking, ads keyed only to the current query.

Paid, ad-free metasearch engine with personal ranking controls and built-in AI features.

UK search engine running its own crawler and index, no tracking, free to use with a paid API for developers.

A self-hosted metasearch engine that aggregates results from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, and dozens more.

Community-built world map with open data, run by a UK foundation, used by countless downstream apps.

Offline-first mobile maps and turn-by-turn navigation built on OpenStreetMap data, with no ads, no tracking, and no account.

Offline-first maps and turn-by-turn navigation for Android and iOS, built on OpenStreetMap data.

Open-source virtual classroom with whiteboard, breakout rooms, polls, and native LMS integration, run on your own server.

Matrix-native group video calls with end-to-end encryption, hosted by Element or self-hostable.

Peer-to-peer video, voice, and chat with no central server, sponsored by Savoir-faire Linux as a GNU project.

Open-source browser-based video conferencing you can run on your own server.

Browser-based video calls from a Norwegian company, with no app or account required for guests to join.

Italian VPN run since 2010 by hacktivists, with GPLv3 clients, anonymous crypto signup, and port forwarding.

A paid-only VPN from a Gibraltar company, with anonymous account IDs and cash or crypto payment.

Swedish VPN provider with anonymous numbered accounts, flat €5 per month, and audited RAM-only servers.

Swiss-run VPN with a free tier that has no data cap and open source clients on every platform.

Chromium-based browser with built-in ad and tracker blocking, optional crypto rewards, and a private search engine.

Open-source desktop and mobile browser built on the independent Gecko engine, developed by Mozilla.

A privacy-hardened Firefox fork with telemetry stripped and uBlock Origin pre-installed.

Tor Browser without the Tor network, hardened against fingerprinting and built jointly by the Tor Project and Mullvad.

Hardened Firefox fork that routes traffic through the Tor network, with industry-strongest anti-fingerprinting defaults.

Weighs the soul of incoming HTTP requests to stop AI crawlers

Open-source self-hosted re-implementation of the Tailscale coordination server, compatible with stock Tailscale clients.

WireGuard mesh from a Berlin startup, with fully open-source clients and server and an optional managed control plane.

WireGuard-based mesh VPN that connects your own devices into a private network, with a hosted coordination server.

Modern open-source VPN protocol and reference implementation, run on a server you control.

Free hosted chat UI from Hugging Face that lets you pick from open-weight models like Llama, Qwen, Mixtral, and Gemma.

Open-source desktop app that runs LLMs locally on Mac, Windows, and Linux, with a ChatGPT-style UI.

Hosted AI chat assistant from Mistral, a Paris-based lab, with a free tier and paid Pro, Team, and Enterprise plans.

A local LLM runner that pulls open models and serves them on your machine through a CLI and an OpenAI-compatible HTTP API.

Self-hosted ChatGPT-style web interface that pairs with Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible API.

Self-hosted LibreOffice-based document server with real-time collaborative editing of Office and ODF files.

End-to-end encrypted collaborative office suite from a French team, free on cryptpad.fr or self-hostable.

Self-hosted document server with strong Microsoft Office format fidelity; web editors for .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx.

Lightweight, community-driven Git forge you host yourself.

All-in-one DevOps platform for code hosting, CI/CD, and project management.