Best European Alternatives to Google Docs
Looking for a European alternative to Google Docs? Google's document editor is powerful, but it processes your data on US servers and uses your content to improve its AI. For businesses and individuals who value privacy, GDPR compliance, and data sovereignty, European document editors offer compelling options.
We've curated the best privacy-focused document editors and collaborative writing tools built in Europe. These alternatives provide powerful editing capabilities while keeping your documents protected under European law.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and processes customer data in Europe. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Paid placement can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. Editorial policy
Why Choose a European Alternative to Google Docs?
Document Privacy
Your documents stay private and aren't used to train AI models.
EU Data Centers
Documents processed and stored exclusively within the European Union.
End-to-End Encryption
Many alternatives offer zero-knowledge encryption for sensitive documents.
Open Source
Many European document editors are open source, ensuring transparency.
Best European Alternatives to Google Docs
We've curated the best privacy-focused document editors from European companies. Each alternative has been evaluated for features, privacy, and GDPR compliance.
OnlyOffice
Full-featured open-source office suite with excellent compatibility
CryptPad
End-to-end encrypted collaborative office suite from France
Collabora Online
Enterprise-ready LibreOffice-powered online office suite
Key takeaways
- Google does offer an encrypted mode where it cannot read the document, but only on Frontline Plus, Enterprise Plus and Education Standard and Plus, and only once an administrator has set up key and identity services for it.
- A Google Doc caps at 1.02 million characters and a Sheet at 10 million cells, limits an installed office suite does not impose.
- Nothing leaves Docs as an original: every DOCX you export is Google's rendering of your document, not the file you started with.
- CryptPad keeps the decryption key in the part of the share link the browser never sends to the server, so the host cannot read what it hosts.
- On a personal Google account there is no data processing agreement, no audit log and no region setting, which is a problem for a business long before it is a problem for a document.
Why people leave Google Docs
Google Docs won the collaborative editor and nothing since has taken it back. Two people typing in one document with no save button and no merge conflict is still the benchmark, it costs nothing with a personal account, and everybody you need to share with already has one.
The reason to leave is not that the editing is bad. It is that a Google Doc is a web application belonging to Google LLC, that Google can read it, and that the copy you hand to anyone outside Google is a conversion produced on the way out. For a school newsletter none of that matters. For a legal opinion, a merger memo or a patient report, it is the whole question.
One thing this page will not claim: Google is not reading your documents to sell advertising. The advertising story belongs to Gmail and to 2017. The argument against Docs is quieter and harder to fix — the service is readable to its operator, and its operator is subject to United States law.
- There is a mode where Google cannot read the document, and you are probably not on it Google Workspace client-side encryption is real: keys come from an external key service you control, and the servers hold material Google cannot decrypt. It is available on Frontline Plus, Enterprise Plus and Education Standard and Plus. Below those editions, and on every free personal account, it does not exist at any price — and setting it up means running a key service, which is a project rather than a checkbox.
- The ceilings are lower than a desktop suite's A Google Doc stops at 1.02 million characters. An uploaded document converts only if it is under 50MB. A Sheet holds up to 10 million cells or 18,278 columns. A presentation converted to Slides is capped at 100MB. Most people never touch these, and the ones who do — a thesis, a transcript corpus, a modelling spreadsheet — hit them without warning in the middle of a deadline.
- Every hand-off is a format conversion Docs is excellent inside itself and approximate at the border. Complex Word files lose their shape on the way in, and exported DOCX files carry Google's interpretation of your layout rather than your own. Suggestions, comment threads and revision history travel worst of all. If your documents are read mostly by colleagues in the same account, this never surfaces; if they are read by clients, regulators or a court, it surfaces constantly.
- Free means no contract and no controls Docs on a personal Google account has no data processing agreement, no admin console, no audit log and no region setting. Those arrive with a paid Workspace subscription starting at €6.80 per user per month. Plenty of small businesses are running their commercial documents on consumer accounts and have never noticed the difference, which is a compliance problem long before it is a product problem.
What you have to replace, not just match
Decide first whether you are replacing an editor or a way of working, because those cost very different amounts of disruption.
If you need a word processor and a spreadsheet that produce files, OnlyOffice, Collabora Online and any local suite all qualify, and the migration is a weekend of exports. If you need the thing that made Docs famous — a link, several cursors, no installation and no account for the person you sent it to — the field narrows sharply, because that is the expensive feature to reproduce.
The middle case is the common one: a handful of documents that genuinely need live co-editing, and a long tail that only ever had one author. Split them. Keeping one shared editor for the first group while everything else becomes a real file is cheaper and less disruptive than moving the whole company onto a single replacement.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | OnlyOffice | Riga, Latvia | Free desktop and self-hosted / cloud from about €4/user/month | EU (Latvia) |
| #2 | CryptPad | Paris, France | Free (50MB) / from about €5/month (5GB) | EU (France) |
| #3 | Collabora Online | Cambridge, United Kingdom | Free Community Edition / Enterprise on request | Wherever you host it |
How each alternative compares to Google Docs
- Which law reaches it. EU (Latvia). Google Docs is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU, or self-hosted.
- Source code. Open source, where Google Docs is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: Teams whose documents are read by people outside the company
The difference between OnlyOffice and Google Docs is not the interface, which is deliberately familiar to anyone coming from Word. It is that a document in OnlyOffice already is a DOCX. There is no import when it arrives and no conversion when it leaves, so the file a client opens is the file you edited rather than a rendering of it.
Ascensio System SIA is registered in Riga, which puts the operating company inside EU law. You can take the cloud at about €4 per user per month, run the Community Edition on your own server within its connection limit, or simply install the desktop editors, which are free for commercial use and work with no account at all.
Against Docs it loses on reach. Getting an outsider into a document takes more than pasting a link, the mobile apps are competent rather than delightful, and simultaneous editing with many people is smooth but not Google-smooth. The gain is that nothing in your archive depends on a service continuing to exist.
What OnlyOffice does better than Google Docs
- DOCX, XLSX and PPTX are the working format, so no round trip degrades them
- Free desktop editors run offline with no account, where Docs needs Chrome and preparation
- Documents can live on your own server rather than in someone else's account
- Latvian operating company, so no US legal process reaches the supplier
- No cap comparable to Docs' 1.02 million characters or 10 million cells
Where OnlyOffice is a step down from Google Docs
- Sharing with an account-less outsider is heavier than pasting a Google link
- Live editing with a dozen people is good rather than effortless
- Mobile apps trail Google's by a distance
- The cloud edition is billed per user, where consumer Docs is free
Standout against Google Docs. It is the only editor here that never converts your document, which removes the single most common way a Google Doc surprises the person you sent it to.
- Which law reaches it. EU (France). Google Docs is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. France.
- Source code. Open source, where Google Docs is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: Documents that would be damaging to leak and still need two people editing them
CryptPad, from XWiki SAS in Paris, does the one thing Google Docs structurally cannot: it lets several people edit a document at once while the server stores only ciphertext. Encryption happens in the browser, and the key travels in the fragment of the share link after the hash — the part a browser never sends to the server.
For a Docs user the behaviour is recognisable. You open a link, you type, someone else's cursor appears. Around the document sit sheets, slides, kanban boards, forms and a whiteboard, so a small team can cover most of its collaborative work without the provider ever holding readable content.
The price is paid in the places where Docs is strongest. Server-side search across your documents is impossible by construction, very long documents feel heavier, Microsoft format fidelity is not the design goal, the free tier holds 50MB, and if the key is lost there is no recovery and no support ticket that helps.
What CryptPad does better than Google Docs
- The operator cannot read the content, where Google can and must to power its features
- No account needed for the person you share with, and no readable copy on the server
- French company, French hosting, and fully self-hostable if you prefer your own server
- Open source, so the encryption can be audited rather than taken on trust
Where CryptPad is a step down from Google Docs
- Searching across your own documents is limited by the same encryption that protects them
- Word and Excel fidelity is not what it optimises for
- Storage allowances are small: 50MB free, single-digit gigabytes paid
- A lost key means a lost document, with nobody able to reset it
Standout against Google Docs. The decryption key sits in the part of the URL the browser keeps to itself, which is how a link can be shared with a stranger without being shared with the server.
- Which law reaches it. Wherever you host it. Google Docs is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Your own infrastructure, or European managed hosting.
- Source code. Open source, where Google Docs is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: Organisations that have a file platform and want editing inside it
Collabora Online is browser-based editing you install rather than subscribe to. It is the recommended editor for Nextcloud, it speaks WOPI so it also works with ownCloud, Seafile and enterprise content systems, and it deploys through Docker, Kubernetes charts or distribution packages.
That makes it the natural answer for an organisation whose objection to Google Docs is architectural: instead of moving documents to a different company, the documents stay on infrastructure you already operate and gain a Docs-like editing surface on top. It is why European public bodies keep appearing in its deployment list.
Two honest caveats. Collabora Productivity Ltd is registered in Cambridge, so the company sits outside the EU after Brexit even though you choose where the software runs — worth deciding deliberately if your requirement is EU establishment rather than EU hosting. And because it descends from LibreOffice, ODF handling is excellent while OOXML is good with the occasional layout surprise.
What Collabora Online does better than Google Docs
- Editing happens on infrastructure you own instead of in an account Google controls
- Community Edition costs nothing to license, against €6.80 a seat for the cheapest Workspace
- ODF is native, so documents remain openable without any vendor's permission
- Plugs into Nextcloud, ownCloud and Seafile rather than demanding you migrate storage
Where Collabora Online is a step down from Google Docs
- You own the server, the updates and the backups that Google handles invisibly
- Collabora Productivity Ltd sits in Cambridge, so the supplier is outside the EU even when the server is not
- OOXML rendering is slightly less exact than OnlyOffice on complicated layouts
- Enterprise pricing is quoted rather than published, unlike Google's price list
Standout against Google Docs. It is the only option here that is not a destination at all: the documents never move, and the editor comes to the platform you already run.
What actually breaks when you switch
The first casualty is the link. Documents in Docs are addressed by URL and those URLs appear in contracts, onboarding pages, email threads and calendar invites; nothing forwards after the file is gone. Make a short list of the documents other people point at, move those first and give them addresses that will still resolve in a year.
The second is the review trail. Bulk-exporting to DOCX gets the text out reliably and loses the conversation around it: suggestion history, resolved comments and who approved what. If those matter for an audit, export the documents with comments as PDF as well, and keep that archive separately from the editable copies.
The third is the people you do not employ. Clients, freelancers and board members all have Google accounts and no interest in your migration. Expect to keep one shared surface for them, or to spend the first three months explaining a new link format to people who did not ask for it.
If Google offers client-side encryption, why look elsewhere?
Because of who it is for. Client-side encryption is an enterprise control: it ships on Frontline Plus, Enterprise Plus and the Education Standard and Plus editions, and it expects an administrator to wire up a key service and an identity provider beside it, whether through the standard or the simplified setup Google documents. That is a sensible arrangement for a ministry and an absurd one for a nine-person agency.
It also changes the product. Encrypted files behave differently in search, in previews and in some add-ons, because the features that made Docs pleasant are the ones that need to read the content.
CryptPad reaches the same guarantee from the opposite direction: encryption is the default rather than an add-on, and the price of entry is nothing rather than an Enterprise Plus contract.
Will my documents look the same after switching?
Simple ones will. A memo, a letter, a report with headings and a table moves between Docs, OnlyOffice, Collabora and Word without anybody noticing.
Complicated ones need testing, and the test is specific: take the branded template with the tracked changes, the merged cells and the embedded chart, move it, and open the result in Microsoft Word rather than in the new tool. OnlyOffice is the strongest of these on that particular exam because DOCX is its own format rather than an import. Collabora is built on LibreOffice, so ODF is immaculate and OOXML is good with occasional surprises.
The comparison people forget to make is against Docs itself. Google is not a neutral reference point here; it also reshapes complex Word files, which is why documents that bounce between Docs and Word drift a little more each round.
Can anything replace sharing a link with someone who has no account?
CryptPad does it and does it better, because the link carries the key in the fragment after the hash, which browsers never transmit to the server. The recipient needs no account and the host cannot read what they open.
Collabora Online can do it too, but only through the platform underneath — a Nextcloud public link, for instance — so it depends on the file service you pair it with rather than working on its own.
OnlyOffice supports external sharing in DocSpace and in the platforms it plugs into. None of the three is quite as frictionless as pasting a Docs link into an email, and that gap is the honest cost of leaving.
Does anything here work when the internet does not?
OnlyOffice does, properly: the desktop editors are free for personal and commercial use, run on Windows, macOS and Linux, and open local files with no browser and no account. Docs offline works, but it is a Chrome arrangement with files you prepared in advance.
Collabora Online is a server product, so offline is a question about where the server is rather than about the software. On a laptop it needs a connection, to your own machine if that is how you run it.
CryptPad is browser-based and needs a connection to load, which is the trade that comes with client-side encryption in a web page.
Which one to pick
If most of your documents leave the building as Word files, OnlyOffice is the straightforward choice and the only one here that never converts them on the way out.
If confidentiality is the reason you are reading this page, CryptPad is the only option that removes the operator's ability to read the content, and it is free to try at a size where you can see whether the trade-offs are bearable.
If you already run Nextcloud, ownCloud or Seafile, Collabora Online is less a migration than a switch you turn on, provided a UK-registered supplier fits your requirements.
And if what you actually need is Google's frictionless link sharing with the whole world, none of these matches it. In that case the useful move is to pay for a Workspace edition with data regions and, if the documents warrant it, client-side encryption, rather than to switch and be disappointed.
Frequently Asked Questions
OnlyOffice if what you produce ends up as Word files in other people's hands, because DOCX is its native format rather than an export target. CryptPad if the documents are confidential enough that the host should be unable to read them. Collabora Online if you already run a file platform such as Nextcloud and want editing inside it. The deciding question is what happens to the document after you finish writing it.
Google Workspace can be operated in a compliant way: there is a data processing agreement, and data regions covering Docs, Drive, Gmail and the rest are included with Business Standard and Business Plus and available in a stronger form on Enterprise Plus. A personal Google account has none of that — no processing agreement, no region, no admin controls — so a business running client documents on free accounts has a problem that no configuration will fix.
Yes, in the ordinary configuration, because the features people stay for depend on it: search across your Drive, previews, spelling and grammar suggestions, and collaborative editing all require the service to process the content. The exception is client-side encryption, where the keys come from a service you run, and that is limited to Frontline Plus, Enterprise Plus and Education Standard and Plus.
No, and it is worth being accurate about this because the claim gets repeated. The advertising story concerns Gmail content scanning, which ended in 2017, and Workspace content is not used to target ads. The case for leaving Docs is that the service can read your documents and that Google LLC is a US company subject to US legal process, not that your quarterly report is being sold to advertisers.
A document created in Docs holds up to 1.02 million characters. A word processing file uploaded and converted must be under 50MB. Spreadsheets stop at 10 million cells or 18,278 columns, and a presentation converted to Slides is limited to 100MB. Desktop suites such as OnlyOffice, LibreOffice or SoftMaker have no comparable ceilings, which matters for long manuscripts, transcripts and large models.
Partly, and this is the part to test rather than assume. Comment threads and suggestions are the least portable things in any document format, and they travel worst between a web editor and a desktop one. Export a real document containing both, open it in the destination, and check whether the reviewer names and the thread order are intact. If they are not, close out the reviews before migrating rather than after.
No. A Docs link stops working when the document is removed or the account closes, and there is no forwarding. Links live in emails, contracts, tickets and intranet pages, and they fail one at a time over the following months. Before you switch, list the documents that other people link to — there are always fewer than you expect — and give those a stable new address first.
Several, and they are free in different ways. OnlyOffice desktop editors cost nothing for personal and commercial use, and its self-hosted Community Edition is free within a connection limit. Collabora Online has a Community Edition you run yourself. CryptPad has a free tier at 50MB and can be self-hosted entirely. None of them is free in Google's sense of an account someone else operates for you indefinitely.
Three things worth admitting. Simultaneous editing at scale is smoother than anything here, especially with a dozen people in one document. Sharing with someone who has no account is one paste of a link. And the surrounding ecosystem — add-ons, mobile apps, offline in Chrome, the fact that everyone already knows it — is bigger than any European alternative will assemble. You are trading those for a document you own and an operator who cannot read it.
Who worked on this review
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