W

Whereby

SaaS alternative

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

Category
Video calls · SaaS alternative
Cost
Freemium
Country
Norway
Licensing
Proprietary
Platforms
Web · iOS · Android

Pros and cons

+ what works
  • +EEA data residency and GDPR-compliant by design, no US data transfer for European users
  • +Guests join from a browser with no account, no app install, and no sign-in
  • +Persistent room URLs you can bookmark and reuse
  • +E2EE in peer-to-peer mode for small rooms (up to 4 participants), when networks allow
watch out for
  • Closed source; no public client or server code to audit
  • E2EE only covers small peer-to-peer rooms: rooms above 4 participants route through Whereby's SFU with server-side decryption in memory
  • Free tier capped at 4 participants and 30-minute meetings
  • Owned by Videonor AS with a US subsidiary; sales operations sit under US law even though data does not

Privacy notes

Whereby is built and operated from Norway by a team spun out of Telenor in 2013, now owned by Videonor AS. Account data is stored in Ireland and media is routed through EEA-region video servers for European users; the company is GDPR-compliant and ISO 27001 certified. Audio and video content is never recorded to disk by default. Small rooms (up to 4 participants on the free tier) run peer-to-peer with end-to-end encryption when network conditions allow; larger rooms fall back to SFU routing where Whereby's servers terminate DTLS-SRTP in memory to mix and forward streams, so the operator can technically see decrypted media in transit. Norwegian and EU privacy law apply; the United States subsidiary handles sales but data residency stays in the EEA.

Tags

#webrtc · #browser-based · #eea-hosted · #gdpr · #norwegian

Does this work for you?

Did this work for you?


Notes from people who tried it

Comments (0)

No comments yet. Be the first.

Add a comment