Best European Alternatives to Google Meet

Why people leave Google Meet

Google Meet is not something most organisations chose. It arrived attached to Workspace, it puts itself into every calendar invitation by default, and it costs nothing extra on a licence you were already paying for. That is why it is difficult to leave: there is no invoice to cancel and no contract to end, only a habit sitting in the middle of everybody's day.

Start by discarding the two things people usually say about it, because neither survives a check. Guests do not need a Google Account to join a Meet — Google's own documentation says you can join without one, and the organiser or a participant admits you.

And Workspace does not simply keep European data in Europe: data regions is an edition-dependent feature, Fundamental with Business Standard and Business Plus, Enterprise with Enterprise Plus or the paid add-on, with the location set to the United States, the European Union, or no preference at all.

What is left after those two are removed is a narrower but sturdier argument.

Your contract in the EEA is with Google Ireland Limited in Dublin, a subsidiary of an American parent, so the jurisdiction question is about corporate control rather than about which building the bytes are in. And on a free account a call with three or more people stops at 60 minutes, which is where most people first notice that Meet is a feature of a product they have not bought yet.

• Residency depends on which edition you bought Data regions is not a switch every Workspace customer has. Fundamental data regions comes with Business Standard and Business Plus; Enterprise data regions comes with Enterprise Plus or through the Data Regions add-on; Enterprise Essentials and Essentials Plus get the fundamental version. The options are the United States, the European Union or no preference. Plenty of organisations assume they are on the European setting and have never opened the admin console to look.
• The clock on the free tier A free Google Account gets 24 hours for a one-to-one call and 60 minutes as soon as a third person joins, with a warning at 50 minutes. That limit is not a bug to route around; it is the recruitment mechanism for a paid edition. Every alternative here has a different answer to it, and one of them has no limit at all.
• Your contracting party is Irish, your parent company is not For users in the EEA and Switzerland the service is provided by Google Ireland Limited, registered in Ireland at Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4. That is a real fact and it is worth knowing, because it means the usual shorthand of "an American company in Mountain View" is imprecise. It also does not resolve anything: a European subsidiary of a US parent remains inside the reach of orders directed at that parent, which is the specific risk a European supplier does not carry.
• It is the default, not the decision Meet inserts a link into calendar invitations automatically, which means the tool gets chosen by the calendar rather than by anyone. That is the actual lock-in, and it is stronger than any technical dependency: nobody has to like Meet for it to stay, they only have to keep accepting invitations. Any replacement has to beat a link that appears without anyone typing it.

What you have to replace, not just match

Before comparing anything, separate the three uses that hide behind one button, because Meet is used for jobs it was never designed for and those jobs need different replacements.

The first is the internal meeting: colleagues in the same Workspace, convened from the calendar, where the link matters less than the invitation.

The second is the external call: a client, a candidate or a supplier who does not work for you, where the only thing that matters is that they get in without a fight. The third is the event: a launch, a training session, a customer webinar, currently held together by Meet plus a Google Form for sign-ups plus a spreadsheet of attendees plus a manual reminder email.

Jitsi answers the first when the objection is that no company should hold the recording. Whereby answers the second, and it is priced for the people who convene meetings rather than per user, so only they appear on the invoice. Livestorm answers the third properly, and it is the one that replaces a workflow rather than a call.

The alternatives compared

How each alternative compares to Google Meet

What actually breaks when you switch

The default is the whole migration. Google Calendar adds a Meet link to invitations unless it is told not to, so unless the conferencing default is changed in the admin console and in individual calendar settings, the tool you decided to leave keeps being chosen by software rather than by people. Change it on day one, before announcing anything.

Recurring series are the second trap, and they are slower to surface. A weekly meeting created two years ago carries its original Meet link for as long as the series runs, which means the old tool keeps working for months after the decision. Rewrite the recurring invitations in one deliberate pass, and accept the hour it costs.

Third, be realistic about what leaves with Meet. If your organisation is on Workspace for Gmail, Docs and Drive, you are not cancelling anything — you are adding a second supplier and a second bill for the meetings. That can still be the right decision, but it should be made as an addition rather than presented internally as a saving.

Do people outside my company really not need a Google Account?

They really do not. Google's support documentation is explicit: you can join a meeting without a Google Account, and either the organiser or a participant lets you in. A guest clicks the link, types a name and asks to be admitted.

This matters because it removes one of the most repeated arguments for leaving, and repeating a wrong argument to a sceptical colleague costs you the whole conversation. What remains true is that the admission step is manual and interrupts the meeting, and that anyone who wants to create a meeting rather than join one does need an account.

If your objection to Meet is friction for outsiders, test it honestly first. If the friction you actually mind is the knock-to-enter prompt, Whereby and Jitsi both remove it. If you assumed guests were blocked outright, they are not, and you should pick your reason again.

Is my Workspace data already in the EU?

Check the admin console rather than assuming, because it depends on what you bought. Fundamental data regions is included with Business Standard and Business Plus. Enterprise data regions is included with Enterprise Plus or available through the Data Regions add-on, and Frontline and Enterprise Essentials editions land on one or the other. The location setting offers the United States, the European Union, or no preference — and no preference is a real setting that organisations leave in place for years.

Two further limits are worth stating plainly. Data regions is a policy about where covered data sits at rest, not a claim about every processing step, and it says nothing at all about which law reaches the company applying it.

So if your requirement came from a procurement rule about storage location, the answer may be a licence upgrade rather than a migration. If it came from a risk assessment about foreign disclosure orders, no Workspace setting addresses it, and that is the case for looking at a European supplier.

How do we stop Calendar putting a Meet link in everything?

This is the real migration task, and it is a policy change rather than a technical one. Conferencing defaults live in the Workspace admin console and in each person's calendar settings, and until they change, every new invitation quietly re-adopts the tool you just decided to leave.

Recurring invitations are the second half of the problem. An all-hands series created in 2023 carries its original link for as long as the series exists, so the old tool keeps working long after the decision was made. Rewrite the recurring meetings deliberately, on one day, rather than waiting for them to expire.

Teams that skip this step report the same outcome: the new tool is used for the meetings someone remembered to set up, and Meet is used for everything else. That is not a failed tool choice, it is an unchanged default.

Is a European tool going to cost more than something included for free?

Almost always, and the comparison is worth doing honestly rather than dressed up. Meet is bundled into a Workspace licence you are paying for anyway, so its marginal cost is zero and nothing here can beat zero.

What changes the arithmetic is how the alternatives are priced. Whereby charges from $10.99 a month for the person who convenes, rather than per user, so in a company of forty where six people convene meetings, six people appear on the bill.

Jitsi has no licence cost at all and charges you in server administration instead. Livestorm is the expensive one, priced by attendee credit at about €2.50 per unique attendee per session rather than by seat, and it replaces a workflow rather than a video call.

The one situation where a European tool is cheaper outright is an organisation paying for Workspace seats mostly so that people can hold meetings. If Docs, Drive and Gmail are the reason for the licence, keep the licence and accept that the meeting tool is a second, small line.

Which one to pick

If your objection is that a provider is in the room at all, self-hosted Jitsi is the only answer here that removes the provider rather than replacing it, and you should be honest about whether anyone will own the server.

If your calls are mostly with people outside the company and only a few colleagues ever convene one, Whereby from $10.99 a month per convener is the cheapest real alternative and the least disruptive to guests.

If what you have been calling a meeting is actually an event, Livestorm replaces the form, the spreadsheet and the reminder emails along with the call, and that is where the attendee-credit bill is recovered.

And if your requirement is simply that European data stays in Europe, look in the admin console before you look at suppliers. Data regions may already do what you need on the edition you hold, and switching tools to solve a problem a setting solves is an expensive way to be right.