The European software directory in numbers
Based on 1460 tools reviewed by European Purpose · last compiled October 2026 · how we classify tools
1279
tools run by a company established in the EU/EEA or Switzerland
4%
of the directory is open source (63 of 1460 tools)
30
EU/EEA countries with at least one tool in the directory
2012
median founding year of the companies we list
Where European software companies are established
Counting the 1444 tools in our directory whose vendor is established in Europe.
Germany and France dominate, which tracks with where public procurement money and
sovereign-cloud policy have been concentrated.
European tools by country of establishment
| Country | Share | Tools |
| Germany |
|
371 |
| France |
|
214 |
| United Kingdom |
|
159 |
| Netherlands |
|
129 |
| Switzerland |
|
77 |
| Sweden |
|
53 |
| Spain |
|
44 |
| Belgium |
|
39 |
| Denmark |
|
35 |
| Poland |
|
35 |
| Austria |
|
32 |
| Norway |
|
31 |
| Italy |
|
31 |
| Finland |
|
27 |
| Czech Republic |
|
24 |
| Estonia |
|
23 |
| Romania |
|
15 |
| Ireland |
|
13 |
| Cyprus |
|
12 |
| Luxembourg |
|
9 |
| Latvia |
|
9 |
| Bulgaria |
|
9 |
| Lithuania |
|
9 |
| Slovakia |
|
8 |
| Portugal |
|
8 |
| Slovenia |
|
7 |
| Hungary |
|
5 |
| Croatia |
|
4 |
| Greece |
|
3 |
| Ukraine |
|
3 |
| Malta |
|
1 |
| Gibraltar |
|
1 |
| Serbia |
|
1 |
| Iceland |
|
1 |
| Albania |
|
1 |
Which categories have the most European options
Categories with the deepest European coverage are the ones where the underlying technology
is commoditised or open source. The thinnest are the ones that depend on scale: search,
large-model AI and consumer social.
Open source share by category
Categories where open source is the norm rather than the exception. Only categories with at
least four tools are shown, since a percentage over two tools says very little.
How these numbers are produced
Every tool in our directory has a reviewed page, and each page records where the vendor is
legally established separately from where it stores data. The two are frequently different,
and conflating them is the most common error we see in "European alternatives" lists: a US
company with a Frankfurt data centre is still subject to US law. Vendors established outside
Europe are not listed at all: when we find one in the directory we remove it and redirect
the page to the relevant category. Federated and self-hosted projects with no company
behind them (10 tools) are counted separately and left out
of the country breakdown above, since there is no jurisdiction to attribute them to.