Facts about European Purpose
What this site is, who runs it, how tools are selected, and how the money works, in one place, so it does not have to be pieced together from four pages. Everything below is also stated where it applies.
What is European Purpose?
A directory of European alternatives to widely used US software. It currently covers 1460 tools across 137 categories, plus 246 pages that answer "what is the European alternative to X".
Who publishes it?
G-Cas B.V., a company registered in the Netherlands. The site is published and maintained by Sebastiaan Smits, Founder, who can be reached at hello@europeanpurpose.com and verified on LinkedIn. Pages are researched and drafted with AI assistance and published under his editorial responsibility, and we say so rather than pretend otherwise.
What does "European" mean here?
That the legal entity behind the tool is established in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, not merely that it rents an EU data centre. A US company with servers in Frankfurt is still subject to US law and does not belong in this directory. Of the tools listed, 1279 are established in the EU/EEA or Switzerland, 165 elsewhere in Europe, and 10 are open source projects with no company behind them.
Where do the facts come from?
From the vendor's own material: pricing page, terms, privacy policy, data processing agreement and sub-processor list, plus the public company register where the establishment is in doubt. Not from other directories. Where a claim cannot be verified, the page says the vendor asserts it and we could not confirm it.
How is the site funded?
Paid placement on category pages is the only source of income. There are no affiliate links and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Paid placement can affect the order in which tools appear; it never affects whether a tool is listed, and it never changes what a review says. Every category page states this above the list. The full policy is on our editorial process page.
How current is a page?
Every review page carries a "last reviewed" date taken from the last substantive change to that page, not from the date of the most recent site build. A page nobody has re-checked keeps its old date. Ordinary maintenance, a footer change, a new stylesheet hash, does not move it.
How do I report an error?
Email hello@europeanpurpose.com or use the contact form. Factual corrections are made on the page itself and the "last reviewed" date moves when they are.
Can this page be cited?
Yes. Everything here is intended to be quotable as a statement about European Purpose itself. If you need a figure about the directory rather than about a single tool, market research carries the aggregate numbers and how they were counted.