Best European Alternatives to iCloud
Looking for a European alternative to iCloud? Apple's iCloud offers convenient cloud storage, but it's limited to Apple's ecosystem and stores your data on US servers. For users who value privacy, cross-platform access, and data sovereignty, European cloud storage alternatives offer better options.
We've curated the best privacy-focused cloud storage services built in Europe and Switzerland. These alternatives provide secure file sync and backup while keeping your data protected under European law.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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1
European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA, the UK, Switzerland or Israel, and processes customer data in Europe or Israel. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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2
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 iCloud?
Zero-Knowledge Encryption
Your files are encrypted before leaving your device. Only you hold the keys.
Cross-Platform
Works on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux - not just Apple devices.
EU Data Centers
Data stored in European or Swiss data centers, protected by local laws.
Self-Hosting Option
Options like Nextcloud let you host your own cloud on your own servers.
Best European Alternatives to iCloud
We've curated the best privacy-focused cloud storage services from European companies. Each alternative has been evaluated for security, features, and GDPR compliance.
Nextcloud
Self-hosted cloud platform for files, calendar, contacts, and more
Tresorit
End-to-end encrypted cloud storage with zero-knowledge architecture
pCloud
Swiss cloud storage with lifetime plans and optional encryption
Proton Drive
End-to-end encrypted cloud storage from the makers of ProtonMail
Tuta Drive
Encrypted storage from the Tuta mailbox, in closed beta
Filen
German end-to-end encrypted cloud storage with open-source clients
HiDrive (STRATO)
STRATO's cloud drive, stored only in its own German data centres
Icedrive
UK cloud storage with zero-knowledge encryption and stunning design
Internxt
Post-quantum encrypted cloud storage with zero-knowledge architecture - the future-proof European alternative to Google Drive
Jottacloud
Unlimited storage at a fixed price, in datacentres Jotta owns in Oslo and Stavanger
kDrive by Infomaniak
Swiss cloud storage with ecological commitment and privacy-first approach
Koofr
Slovenian cloud storage on German servers, with 10 GB free and paid plans from 0.5 EUR a month
SwissTransfer
Free large file transfer from Infomaniak, hosted entirely in Switzerland
Key takeaways
- With Advanced Data Protection enabled Apple cannot read your iCloud Drive, Photos, Notes or backups — twenty-five categories in total, up from fifteen.
- That feature has been unavailable to British users since 21 February 2025, after a Technical Capability Notice; Apple challenged it at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal and it is still switched off there.
- iCloud Mail, Contacts and Calendars are excluded from end-to-end encryption whatever your settings, because the underlying standards do not support it.
- Nothing here replaces iPhone device backup, so for most people leaving iCloud means keeping a small iCloud plan rather than closing the account.
- At €9.99 for 2 TB shared with five family members, iCloud+ is hard to undercut: only Filen (€8.99 a month for 2 TiB) and PixelUnion (€9.95, photos only) come in at or below it at that size, so price is rarely a reason to go.
Why people leave iCloud
iCloud is not really a service people subscribe to. It is the place an iPhone puts things when you say yes during setup, and by the time anyone thinks about it there are eleven years of photographs, every device backup, the keychain and the message history inside it.
Apple has done more than any other company in this comparison to make that defensible. Turn on Advanced Data Protection and the number of end-to-end encrypted categories rises from fifteen to twenty-five, taking in iCloud Drive, Photos, Backup, Notes, Reminders, Voice Memos and Safari bookmarks. With it switched on, Apple genuinely cannot read those files.
The reason to look elsewhere is what happened next. A government asked for access, and rather than build a way in Apple withdrew the feature from an entire country — British users lost Advanced Data Protection on 21 February 2025 and still do not have it back. A protection that a home office can remove by letter is a different kind of promise from one built into the architecture.
- The strongest setting is optional, and revocable Advanced Data Protection is opt-in, so most iCloud accounts are running without it and Apple holds the keys to their Drive, Photos and backups. For those that do have it on, the United Kingdom demonstrated in 2025 that a state can make it disappear: served with a Technical Capability Notice under the Investigatory Powers Act, Apple withdrew the feature for UK users instead of complying and took the notice to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. Apple's own support page still states that it cannot offer Advanced Data Protection to new users in the United Kingdom.
- Mail, Contacts and Calendars are never covered Apple documents this plainly and it is easy to miss. Even with Advanced Data Protection enabled, iCloud Mail is not end-to-end encrypted because it has to interoperate with the global email system, and Contacts and Calendars are not either because the underlying standards have no support for it. Your address book and your diary — arguably the most revealing things in the account — are outside the guarantee by design.
- One account, and no way to take half of it iCloud is not a storage tier bolted onto a phone; it is where Photos keeps the library, where Messages keeps history, where Backup keeps the device, and where Keychain keeps the passwords. There is no export that produces a working copy of all of that. Leaving is not a migration but a series of separate decisions, each with its own tool and its own weekend.
- Five gigabytes, still The free allowance has been 5 GB since iCloud launched in 2011, which is less than a modern phone photographs in a fortnight. It is the most effective upsell in consumer software and it works precisely because the alternative is a device that quietly stops backing up. Several European providers give two or three times that for nothing.
What you have to replace, not just match
Work out which of the four iCloud jobs you are actually moving, because they have different answers and only one of them is hard.
Documents in iCloud Drive are the easy job: they are ordinary files and every option here takes them.
The photo library is the hard one, because it is not a folder — it is albums, faces, edits held separately from originals, and shared libraries, and the export gives you the pictures without most of the structure.
Device backup is a third thing entirely and no service on this page performs it; an iPhone backs up to iCloud or to a Mac, full stop. Contacts and calendars are the fourth, and they are the easiest of all because they run on CalDAV and CardDAV, which anything will speak.
The practical result is that most people end up with iCloud still switched on for backup and a European service holding everything else. That is a legitimate outcome rather than a failed migration, and a page that pretends you can delete the Apple account entirely is not being straight with you.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Nextcloud | Stuttgart, Germany | Free self-hosted / Enterprise plans on request | EU (Germany) |
| #2 | Tresorit | Zurich, Switzerland | From about €10.42/month (Personal) | Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #3 | pCloud | Baar, Switzerland | From about €49.99/year or €199 lifetime (500GB) | Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #4 | Proton Drive | Geneva, Switzerland | Free 5GB / Drive Plus 200GB at €4.99/month or €47.88/year | Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #5 | Tuta | Hanover, Germany | Free (1GB) / from about €3/month | EU (Germany) |
| #6 | Filen | Germany | Free 10GB / from about €1.99/month | EU (Germany) |
| #7 | HiDrive | Berlin, Germany | From €6/month for 500GB, €7.50 for 1TB (incl. VAT); first-year discounts | EU (Germany) |
| #8 | Internxt | Valencia, Spain | Free 1GB / from about €0.89/month; lifetime plans available | EU (Spain) |
| #9 | Koofr | Ljubljana, Slovenia | Free 10GB / from 0.5 EUR per month for 25GB, billed yearly, incl. 22% VAT | EU (Slovenia) |
| #10 | PixelUnion | Alkmaar, Netherlands | Free 16 GB / 150 GB €2.95, 450 GB €4.95, 2 TB €9.95 per month (€29.50, €49.50, €99.50 yearly), 4 TB from €19.95 per month, custom plans up to 20 TB; prices include VAT | EU (Netherlands) |
How each alternative compares to iCloud
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). iCloud 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. Wherever you host it.
- Source code. Open source, where iCloud is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: People who want files, photos, contacts and calendar under one roof they own
iCloud is unusual among the products on this site because it is four services pretending to be one, and Nextcloud is the only entry here that answers more than one of them. It stores files, it has a mobile app that uploads the camera roll automatically, and it serves contacts and calendars over CardDAV and CalDAV — which happen to be the exact two categories Apple leaves outside end-to-end encryption whatever you configure.
Nextcloud GmbH is in Stuttgart and the software is AGPL-licensed, so the copy you run is one you can inspect. Run it on a machine you control and the question of whether a government can compel your provider stops having a subject: there is no provider.
It does not back up an iPhone, it will not reproduce Photos' face recognition, and it is a server that somebody has to keep patched. For a household that means a managed European host rather than a box in a cupboard, and for anyone unwilling to own either, this is the wrong entry on the page.
What Nextcloud does better than iCloud
- Replaces iCloud Drive, the camera roll, contacts and calendar in one place rather than four subscriptions
- CardDAV and CalDAV sync, so the two categories Apple never end-to-end encrypts stop sitting on Apple servers
- No provider holds anything, so no notice served on a company can change what you have
- AGPL-licensed and inspectable, where iCloud's implementation has to be taken on trust
- No per-gigabyte pricing at all: the ceiling is the disk you attached
Where Nextcloud is a step down from iCloud
- Cannot perform an iPhone device backup, which iCloud does invisibly every night
- Photo handling is storage and albums, not Apple's faces, memories and shared libraries
- Someone must run updates and backups, a job iCloud does silently for €0.99 a month
- Desktop and mobile apps are less polished than Apple's, and iOS integration is app-level rather than system-level
Standout against iCloud. It is the only option here that takes contacts and calendars off Apple, which is exactly the data Advanced Data Protection was never going to cover.
- Which law reaches it. Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA). iCloud 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. Switzerland, Ireland, Netherlands.
- Source code. Closed source, as iCloud is.
- Independently checked. Independently audited, zero-knowledge.
Best for: The documents in iCloud Drive that have to stay confidential for years
Tresorit AG is a Swiss Post subsidiary in Zurich, and its encryption is not a setting you enable but the only mode the product has. Compare that with the position British iCloud users have been in since February 2025, holding an account where the strongest protection is present in the documentation and absent from the device.
Tresorit also encrypts file names and folder structure, not just contents, which matters for exactly the kind of material people keep in iCloud Drive and would rather not have catalogued — scans of documents, correspondence with a lawyer, anything named after a person.
It is the narrowest fit on this page for a typical iCloud account, because a typical iCloud account is mostly photographs. There is no camera roll backup to speak of, no device backup, no calendar, and it costs more per month than the 2 TB iCloud+ plan it would only partly replace. Use it for the serious folder, not for the whole account.
What Tresorit does better than iCloud
- End-to-end encryption is the only mode, not an opt-in setting that a national order can remove
- File names and folder structure are encrypted too, where iCloud protects contents and not the catalogue
- Swiss company outside both the EU and the reach of the Investigatory Powers Act
- Share links carry passwords, expiry and revocation, which iCloud Drive sharing handles far more crudely
Where Tresorit is a step down from iCloud
- No device backup, no camera roll pipeline, no calendar — it replaces one quarter of iCloud
- Dearer per month than iCloud+ 2 TB while offering less storage
- No free tier at all, where iCloud at least gives you 5 GB
- Nothing resembling Apple's integration into Files, Photos and the share sheet
Standout against iCloud. Encrypted file names: the one thing iCloud does not hide even with Advanced Data Protection is what your folders are called.
- Which law reaches it. Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA). iCloud 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. Luxembourg (EU) or Texas (US), your choice.
- Source code. Closed source, as iCloud is.
Best for: Households whose iCloud problem is a decade of video and a recurring charge
The typical reason an iCloud account reaches 2 TB is not documents. It is 4K video from three phones and eleven years of photographs, and the €9.99 a month it triggers is a charge with no end date attached to it.
pCloud AG in Baar sells storage outright rather than renting it: at the time of writing a lifetime plan is €219 for 500 GB and €499 for 2 TB. Against €9.99 a month for iCloud+ 2 TB, the 2 TB plan pays for itself somewhere around the fourth year, and pCloud handles large media libraries and streaming playback well, which is the workload in question.
Two honest caveats. Zero-knowledge encryption is the separate Crypto add-on rather than the default, so out of the box pCloud is in the same position as iCloud without Advanced Data Protection. And the data centre choice made at signup — Luxembourg or Texas — decides whether you have moved your library out of American reach at all. Choose Luxembourg.
What pCloud does better than iCloud
- Storage bought once rather than €9.99 a month with no end, which is the actual complaint about a full iCloud account
- Handles big photo and video libraries and plays media back without exporting first
- Swiss company, and a data centre choice you make rather than one made for you
- Mounts as a drive on a Mac, so a large archive does not need local disk to browse
Where pCloud is a step down from iCloud
- Zero-knowledge is the paid Crypto add-on, where Apple gives Advanced Data Protection away
- Encrypted files cannot be shared directly, so the Crypto folder is a vault rather than a working space
- No iPhone backup and no equivalent of Photos' organisation
- A lifetime plan is a bet on pCloud outliving the payback period, which is a different risk from a monthly charge
Standout against iCloud. It is the only entry here where the answer to an ever-growing iCloud invoice is a single number you pay once.
- Which law reaches it. Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA). iCloud 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. Switzerland and Germany, on server hardware and network Proton owns.
- Source code. Open source, where iCloud is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
- Independently checked. ISO 27001 (stated for Proton for Business); Drive apps audited by Securitum, report published.
Best for: iPhone users who want the camera roll off Apple without changing how they work
Proton AG operates from Geneva with data centres in Switzerland and Germany, and Proton Drive is the entry on this page that behaves most like the thing you are leaving: a synced folder, apps on iOS and macOS, and automatic encrypted backup of the camera roll from the phone.
The encryption is end-to-end by default and covers file names, folder structure and thumbnails, not only contents. Where Apple's equivalent protection is a switch that a British notice was able to take away, Proton has no consumer position in that jurisdiction to lose and the protection is not optional in the first place.
The free tier is 5 GB, the same as Apple's, so leaving for free is not the pitch; Drive Plus adds 200 GB and Proton Unlimited 500 GB alongside Mail, Calendar, VPN and Pass. That bundle is the nearest European analogue to what an Apple account quietly does for you.
What Proton Drive does better than iCloud
- End-to-end encryption on by default rather than an opt-in setting, and not removable by a national order
- File names, folders and thumbnails are encrypted, which iCloud does not do
- Swiss jurisdiction with data centres in Switzerland and Germany
- Encrypted camera roll backup from the iPhone, replacing the part of iCloud that fills first
- Comes with an encrypted mailbox and calendar, so Apple's three unencrypted categories move too
Where Proton Drive is a step down from iCloud
- No iPhone device backup, so iCloud stays switched on for that
- More expensive per terabyte than iCloud+ at every comparable tier
- Photo features are storage and albums, not Apple's search, faces and memories
- Desktop sync arrived later than the mobile apps and is less mature than Apple's
Standout against iCloud. It is the only one here that takes the camera roll, the mailbox and the calendar off Apple in a single account.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). iCloud 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. Germany.
- Source code. Open source, where iCloud is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: People whose iCloud complaint starts with iCloud Mail
Tuta GmbH is in Hanover, the clients are open source, and the service is hosted in Germany. Its relevance to an iCloud account is precise: iCloud Mail, Contacts and Calendars are the three categories Apple documents as never end-to-end encrypted, and Tuta encrypts exactly those.
Tuta Drive, the storage product, is in closed beta at the time of writing and has been announced with quantum-resistant end-to-end encryption. That is worth watching and it is not something you can move a photo library into this month, which is why it sits last here rather than higher.
Judge it on the mailbox. If your objection to iCloud is that your address book and your diary sit readable on a Californian company's servers, this is the German answer and it costs about €3 a month with a free tier underneath it.
What Tuta does better than iCloud
- Encrypts mail, contacts and calendar — the three iCloud categories Apple leaves outside end-to-end encryption by design
- German company, German hosting, and open-source clients that can be inspected
- A free tier exists, and paid plans start around €3 a month
- Quantum-resistant encryption, where Apple's scheme is conventional public-key cryptography
Where Tuta is a step down from iCloud
- Tuta Drive is still in closed beta, so it does not replace iCloud Drive today
- No photo library handling and no device backup of any kind
- The encrypted mailbox does not speak standard IMAP, so mail clients need Tuta's own apps
- A far smaller company than Apple, which matters for something holding a decade of correspondence
Standout against iCloud. It is the only entry here aimed squarely at the three iCloud categories that Advanced Data Protection is documented never to cover.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). iCloud 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. Germany.
- Source code. Open source, where iCloud is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
- Independently checked. Open-source clients, zero-knowledge.
Best for: People who want end-to-end encrypted general storage and a camera roll upload for less than iCloud+
Filen is run by Filen Cloud Dienste UG (haftungsbeschränkt) in Recklinghausen, Germany, registered at the district court there under HRB 8896. It says its headquarters and all of its servers are in Germany, and that all of its apps are open source. Encryption happens on your device and the plans are described as zero-knowledge, which puts it on the right side of the Advanced Data Protection argument without a setting to switch on.
It is also one of the few options here that is cheaper than Apple. At the time of writing the plans are €1.99 a month for 200 GiB, €3.99 for 500 GiB and €8.99 for 2 TiB, against €2.99 and €9.99 for the nearest iCloud+ tiers, and the free account is 10 GB. Its help centre documents an automatic camera upload on the mobile app, which covers the part of iCloud that fills first.
The limits are the ones you would expect from a young company. A UG is the German form for a small limited-liability company, and Filen has existed only since 2020, so this is not the safety net Apple or Tresorit offers. One account is one person, with no family sharing of a plan that we could find, and there is no face recognition or search comparable to Apple Photos, no device backup, and no contacts or calendar.
What Filen does better than iCloud
- Cheaper than iCloud+ at both 200 GiB (€1.99) and 2 TiB (€8.99), and the only general storage option here that is
- Client-side, zero-knowledge encryption on the plans, with no opt-in setting to forget
- Company, headquarters and servers in Germany, and apps that are open source
- 10 GB free, double Apple's 5 GB, and a documented automatic camera upload
Where Filen is a step down from iCloud
- No device backup, no calendar and no contacts, so iCloud stays on for those
- Photos are stored and uploaded but not organised with faces, memories or Apple-style search
- A small UG company founded in 2020, a much thinner safety net than Apple
- A plan belongs to one account, where an iCloud+ tier is shared with five family members
Standout against iCloud. It is the only general storage service here that is both zero-knowledge and cheaper than iCloud+ at 2 TB.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). iCloud 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. Germany, in two data centres STRATO runs itself.
- Source code. Closed source, as iCloud is.
- Independently checked. ISO 27001 (TÜV Nord); Trusted Cloud label of the German economics ministry.
Best for: Households that want German data centres and a family plan from an established company
HiDrive is sold by STRATO GmbH in Berlin, registered at Berlin-Charlottenburg under HRB 270570 B, one of the best-known German web hosts. Its pitch is conventional rather than cryptographic: data is hosted in Germany in two data centres, the company holds an ISO 27001 certificate and the Trusted Cloud label of the German economics ministry, and the plans have mobile apps and two-factor authentication.
Monthly prices, VAT included, are €6 for 500 GB, €7.50 for 1 TB, €12.50 for 2 TB and €17.50 for a Family plan of 2 TB across five users, with discounted first years on annual billing. That puts it above iCloud+ at 2 TB and well above it for a family, where Apple shares one €9.99 plan with five others.
The encryption caveat matters for this page. The default is AES128 encryption by STRATO, and end-to-end zero-knowledge encryption is an optional add-on at €2 a month, so out of the box it sits where iCloud sits without Advanced Data Protection. Choose it for the jurisdiction and the established operator, not for privacy from the provider.
What HiDrive does better than iCloud
- Data hosted in Germany in two data centres, from a large established host rather than a start-up
- ISO 27001 certification and the German Trusted Cloud label
- Optional end-to-end zero-knowledge encryption is available, though only as a paid extra
- A five-user Family plan, which a one-person storage service cannot offer
Where HiDrive is a step down from iCloud
- More expensive than iCloud+ at 2 TB (€12.50 against €9.99), and the Family plan costs €17.50
- Zero-knowledge encryption costs an extra €2 a month and is not the default
- No documented photo organisation, face recognition or device backup
- No calendar or contacts, so Apple's three unencrypted categories stay where they are
Standout against iCloud. It is the only option here from a large established German host, with a family plan for five users.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Spain). iCloud 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. European Union.
- Source code. Open source, where iCloud is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
- Independently checked. HIPAA, ISO 27001, SOC 2, open source.
Best for: People who want open-source, end-to-end encrypted storage and prefer paying once
Internxt is operated by Internxt Universal Technologies SL, based in Valencia, Spain, and describes itself as an open-source, zero-knowledge cloud with post-quantum encryption. The free account is 1 GB, a fraction of Apple's 5 GB, and the paid tiers are 1 TB, 2 TB and 5 TB with per-file limits of 10, 50 and 100 GB.
It sells annual and lifetime plans, which makes it a rival to pCloud for anyone tired of a monthly bill. We cannot quote the prices: its pricing page renders the amounts in the browser and they did not load when checked, so compare them on the vendor page yourself before deciding.
The part that matters for iCloud is Internxt Photos, a separate encrypted photo app, which its own page lists as included with the Ultimate plans only. A photo library therefore means the 5 TB tier, where a 200 GB iCloud plan would have done. There is no device backup, calendar or contacts, and it is a small company founded in 2020.
What Internxt does better than iCloud
- Zero-knowledge, post-quantum encryption and open-source code, which can be inspected
- Spanish company inside the EU, outside American and British legal reach
- Lifetime plans exist, so the monthly bill can be turned into a single payment
- A dedicated Photos app with encrypted storage, unlike a plain file store
Where Internxt is a step down from iCloud
- Only 1 GB free, a fifth of Apple's 5 GB
- Photos is bundled only with the Ultimate (5 TB) plans, so a small photo library still needs the largest tier
- No device backup, no contacts and no calendar
- Prices could not be verified in the page markup when checked, so the cost comparison with iCloud+ is left to you
Standout against iCloud. It is the one option here that combines open-source, post-quantum zero-knowledge encryption with a lifetime-plan model.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Slovenia). iCloud 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. Germany, in ISO 27001-certified third-party data centres (provider not named).
- Source code. Closed source, as iCloud is.
Best for: People who only need a modest amount of space and want the phone camera roll off Apple
Koofr is made by Koofr d.o.o. in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and states that its servers are in Germany in ISO 27001 certified data centres, without naming the provider. The free account is 10 GB with no time limit, double Apple's 5 GB, and the mobile apps back up photos and videos automatically.
Its pricing ladder starts far lower than iCloud+. Monthly prices, with 22% VAT included, run from €0.50 for 25 GB and €2 for 110 GB to €10 for 1.01 TB and €20 for 2.51 TB, so a household with a 100 GB library pays less than the €2.99 Apple asks for 200 GB, and one with 2 TB pays about twice as much.
Encryption is the weak spot relative to Apple's best setting. The pricing page lists Koofr Vault safe boxes as its security feature, which is a separate, limited area, not the whole account. There is no face recognition or memories feature, no device backup and no calendar or contacts, and the company does not state a founding year on the pages we checked.
What Koofr does better than iCloud
- Cheap entry plans: €0.50 for 25 GB and €2 for 110 GB, VAT included
- 10 GB free forever, double Apple's 5 GB
- Automatic mobile media backup, covering the camera roll that fills the iCloud allowance
- Slovenian company in the EU with servers in Germany
Where Koofr is a step down from iCloud
- Roughly twice the price of iCloud+ at 2 TB (€20 for 2.51 TB against €9.99 for 2 TB)
- Encryption is limited to Vault safe boxes rather than the whole account, so the base position resembles iCloud without Advanced Data Protection
- No photo organisation, device backup, calendar or contacts
- The hosting provider is not named
Standout against iCloud. It is the only option here with a plan under €1 a month and an ongoing 10 GB free tier with automatic phone media backup.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Netherlands). iCloud 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. Germany for the primary storage, with an encrypted second copy in Finland; the hosting providers are not named on the pages checked, and storage is server-side encrypted, not end-to-end.
- Source code. Open source, where iCloud is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: iPhone users whose whole iCloud bill is the photo library
PixelUnion is a Dutch photo and video library built on a fork of Immich, the open-source Google Photos alternative.
It does one of the four jobs iCloud does, the camera roll, and it does it with the features people actually miss: automatic phone backup from the Immich apps, face recognition, object recognition, search, shared albums and a free 16 GB, more than three times Apple's 5 GB. It publishes its own guide for moving out of iCloud Photos using the immich-go tool, which carries albums and dates across.
The operator is PixelUnion V.O.F., a two-partner business in Alkmaar, Netherlands, KvK number 97002348, founded in 2025. Terms apply Dutch law, and the help centre says photos sit in Germany with an encrypted second copy in Finland. The hosting providers are not named, and the service is offered to EU residents only.
The honest limits are firm. PixelUnion says it does not offer end-to-end encryption, only server-side encryption, so with Advanced Data Protection switched on Apple is the stricter of the two for photos. There is no built-in export, only immich-go, and it does not store general files, contacts or calendars. Pricing is €2.95 for 150 GB, €4.95 for 450 GB and €9.95 for 2 TB a month, VAT included.
What PixelUnion does better than iCloud
- Face recognition, object recognition and search built into the photo library itself, rather than added to a file store, on every plan
- Free tier of 16 GB against Apple's 5 GB, with the full feature set
- Photos stored in Germany with a copy in Finland, outside American and British legal reach
- About €9.95 a month for 2 TB, four cents under iCloud+ at the same size, and users can be added to one subscription
- Published AGPL fork of Immich, and a documented migration path from iCloud Photos
Where PixelUnion is a step down from iCloud
- No end-to-end encryption, where iCloud with Advanced Data Protection has it for Photos
- Photos and videos only: no files, contacts, calendar or device backup
- No built-in export, so leaving later needs the immich-go command line tool
- Two-partner business founded in 2025, a thinner safety net than Apple or the established vendors here
- The narrowest and youngest service on this page, which is why it is listed last: it has no general file storage to fall back on
Standout against iCloud. It is the only entry here built purely as a replacement for iCloud Photos, with face recognition and search included on the free plan.
What actually breaks when you switch
The photo library is where these migrations go wrong. Exporting from Photos returns originals and edits and discards almost everything that made the library navigable — faces, memories, smart albums, shared library membership — and for a ten-year library the export itself runs for hours and fails silently when the disk fills. Do it by year, count the files at both ends, and do not touch the Apple side until the count matches.
Then there is the part no alternative solves. An iPhone writes its device backup to iCloud or to a computer and nowhere else, so unless you are willing to plug the phone in every week you will keep a small Apple plan. That is fine, but it means the account does not close, and people who planned on closing it find that out late.
Finally, watch for things quietly still pointed at iCloud. Shared albums keep working for family members and stop when you turn the library off. Notes made in the Apple app are not files and export poorly. Documents saved from third-party iOS apps default to iCloud Drive and will keep doing so until you change each app. None of this is hard; all of it is invisible until it breaks.
Is Advanced Data Protection enough on its own?
For the contents of your files, it is close to as good as a mainstream service gets. Twenty-five data categories become end-to-end encrypted, the keys live on your devices, and Apple loses the ability to hand over readable copies of your Drive, your photo library or your backups.
Two gaps remain regardless. Mail, Contacts and Calendars stay outside it permanently, and enabling it means Apple can no longer help you recover the account — you set up a recovery contact or a recovery key and you keep it, or the data is gone.
And there is the availability question the UK made concrete. The feature exists at the pleasure of the jurisdictions Apple operates in, which is not a criticism of Apple so much as a description of where it sits. A Swiss or German provider with no consumer business in the United Kingdom is not exposed to the same instrument.
Can anything here back up an iPhone?
No, and be suspicious of anything that implies otherwise. A full device backup — the settings, the app data, the message history, the health records — is written by iOS to iCloud or, over a cable or Wi-Fi, to a Mac or a PC. Apple does not expose that to third-party destinations.
What the alternatives do replace is the camera roll. Proton Drive and Nextcloud both back up photos and videos from the phone automatically, which is usually what is filling the 5 GB in the first place.
The common arrangement is to move the photo library and the documents to a European service, keep the 50 GB iCloud+ tier at €0.99 purely for device backup, and stop buying the 2 TB plan. That is a real saving and a real reduction in what Apple holds, without pretending the backup problem has been solved.
What actually happens to the photo library?
Photos exports the originals and the edited versions, and loses most of the intelligence around them. Albums come out as folders if you export album by album, people and faces do not come out at all, memories and shared library structure do not survive, and Live Photos arrive as a still plus a separate video file.
The size of the job is also usually underestimated. A ten-year library is commonly several hundred gigabytes, export runs for hours and fails on low disk space, and Photos will not let you export directly to a network volume with any reliability.
Budget a weekend, export in batches by year, and verify the count before deleting anything on the Apple side. This is the step where people lose material, and it is almost always because the export was assumed to have finished.
Does leaving iCloud mean leaving the iPhone?
Not at all, and this is where iCloud differs from the desktop products elsewhere on this site. iOS lets third-party apps take over the jobs: Proton Drive and Nextcloud both have photo backup that runs in the background, files apps that appear in the iOS Files browser, and document access that behaves like iCloud Drive.
Contacts and calendars are genuinely trivial, because iOS speaks CardDAV and CalDAV natively. Add the account in Settings, turn the iCloud versions off, and everything syncs to a German or Swiss server instead with no third-party software involved.
What stays Apple is the parts Apple does not open up: device backup, Keychain if you keep using it, and Messages. Treat those as the residue rather than the reason not to start.
Which one to pick
If your objection is that the strongest protection Apple offers can be removed by a government, Proton Drive answers it most directly for a phone-shaped life, and Nextcloud answers it most completely for anyone willing to run or rent a server.
If you want general storage that is zero-knowledge and cheaper than iCloud+ at 2 TB, Filen is the one to look at, with the caveat that it is a small German UG company founded in 2020. HiDrive is the conventional German-hosted choice from a large host, Koofr the cheap small-plan option with automatic phone media backup, and Internxt the zero-knowledge option with lifetime plans, though its photo app is tied to the 5 TB plan.
If the only thing you want out of iCloud is the photo library, PixelUnion is the narrow answer, with face recognition and search, 16 GB free and servers in Germany, provided you accept that it is photos only, has no end-to-end encryption, and is a young two-partner business, which is why it comes last here.
If the objection is narrower — a folder of confidential documents rather than the whole account — Tresorit is the right size of answer, and the encrypted file names are the part worth paying for. If the objection is a €9.99 monthly charge for a photo and video archive that only grows, pCloud is the one that converts it into a single payment, provided you pick the Luxembourg data centre and budget for Crypto if encryption mattered.
And keep some perspective on the price. iCloud+ at €9.99 for 2 TB across six people is matched or beaten only by Filen at €8.99 for one account and PixelUnion at €9.95 for photos. If you are leaving, leave because of who can compel what, not because you expect to save money, you probably will not.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nextcloud if you want one server holding files, photos, contacts and calendar and no provider in the middle.
Tresorit for documents that must stay confidential for years. pCloud if the problem is a large photo and video library and a monthly bill you would rather pay once.
Proton Drive if you want the closest thing to iCloud's behaviour with encryption that no government has been able to switch off.
Filen if you want zero-knowledge storage that is cheaper than iCloud+ at 2 TB and are happy with a young, small German company. HiDrive for a German-hosted plan from a large established host. Koofr for a cheap, small plan with automatic phone media backup.
Internxt for zero-knowledge storage with a lifetime option, though its photo app only comes with the 5 TB plan. PixelUnion if the job is only the photo library and you want face recognition and search without Apple. Tuta only if you are already in its mailbox, because Tuta Drive is still in closed beta.
Partly by default and largely by choice. Fifteen categories including Health, Messages in iCloud, Keychain, Wi-Fi passwords and Screen Time are end-to-end encrypted with the standard settings. Turning on Advanced Data Protection adds ten more, among them iCloud Drive, Photos, Backup, Notes, Reminders, Voice Memos and Freeform, bringing the total to twenty-five. iCloud Mail, Contacts and Calendars are outside it in every configuration.
Because the Home Office served Apple with a Technical Capability Notice under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, reported on 7 February 2025, seeking access to encrypted iCloud content.
Apple withdrew the feature for United Kingdom users on 21 February 2025 rather than build a way in, and took the notice to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in early March. Apple's own support page still says it can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection to new UK users. The feature has not returned.
Usually, at 2 TB, with two exceptions. iCloud+ is €0.99 for 50 GB, €2.99 for 200 GB and €9.99 for 2 TB, and any paid tier can be shared with up to five family members at no extra cost per person.
Filen asks €8.99 a month for 2 TiB and €1.99 for 200 GiB, which is cheaper at both sizes, but one account is one person. PixelUnion asks €9.95 a month, VAT included, for 2 TB, four cents under iCloud+, and holds photos and videos only.
The rest cost more at 2 TB: HiDrive €12.50 a month for 2 TB (€17.50 for the five-user Family plan) and Koofr €20 a month for 2.51 TB, both with VAT, and Tresorit starts around €10.42 for one person.
Proton Drive gives 5 GB free, the same as Apple. Internxt publishes its prices only in a way we could not check. Koofr is cheaper in small sizes, from €0.50 for 25 GB. If your reason for looking is the bill, do the sum first, because on most plans there is little or no saving.
To a Mac or PC over a cable or local Wi-Fi, yes. To any third-party cloud service, no, because iOS does not allow it, so no provider on this page offers it however it is worded. What you can move off Apple is the camera roll, which Proton Drive, Nextcloud, Filen, Koofr and PixelUnion all back up automatically from the phone, and that is usually what exhausted the 5 GB free tier to begin with.
Add a CardDAV and CalDAV account in iOS Settings pointing at the new provider, let it sync, then switch the iCloud toggles for Contacts and Calendars off. Nextcloud, Proton and most European providers speak both protocols natively. This is worth doing even if you keep everything else on iCloud, because Contacts and Calendars are the two categories Apple never end-to-end encrypts.
The pictures will; the structure mostly will not. Exporting from Photos gives you originals and edited versions, but faces and people recognition, memories, shared library membership and smart albums do not come across, and Live Photos split into a still image and a separate video. Export year by year rather than in one pass, check the file counts against the library, and do not delete anything on the Apple side until you have.
Apple complies with valid legal process like any company, and publishes the numbers. The relevant question is what it is able to hand over: for the fifteen standard end-to-end encrypted categories, nothing readable, and with Advanced Data Protection on, nothing readable for twenty-five. Without it, iCloud Drive, Photos and device backups are decryptable by Apple. That is why the UK order mattered — removing Advanced Data Protection moves an entire country from the second position back to the first.
Not yet. Tuta Drive is in closed beta and Tuta has said it will launch publicly later, with quantum-resistant end-to-end encryption and hosting in Germany. What is available now from Tuta is the encrypted mailbox and calendar, which replaces iCloud Mail and the iCloud calendar rather than iCloud Drive. If you need storage this month, one of the other options on this page is the answer.
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