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_posts/2025-03-21-millions-are-visiting-the-european-alternatives-library––what-trends-are-we-seeing.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives library––what trends are
+  we seeing?
+description: Millions are exploring European alternatives for privacy-friendly
+  tech. Which are the top categories, top tools, and the global demand driving
+  this shift.
+slug: european-alternatives-trends-privacy-tech
+date: 2025-03-24T07:34:19.666Z
+author: hricha-shandily
+image: /uploads/eu-alternatives-traffic-graph.png
+image-alt: eu-alternatives-traffic-graph
+---
+☝️That’s a screenshot from the publicly open Plausible Analytics dashboard of the European Alternatives [website](https://european-alternatives.eu/), featuring independent, privacy-friendly digital tools.
+
+With almost 2M visitors, 2.3M total visits, and 8.5M pageviews, this library is no longer a niche project—it’s the go-to destination for users looking for independent, privacy-friendly tools. Over 1 million of the ~2 million all-time visitors came in 2025 alone—and we’re only in March.
+
+Let’s use the analytics [dashboard](https://plausible.io/european-alternatives.eu) to see what trends are emerging and what is the demand looking like for EU-built, privacy-friendly tech.
+
+1. Ordered list
+{:toc}
+
+## 1100% surge in 2025 traffic
+
+If we filter the dashboard by “Year to date” period, i.e. 2025 so far, we see there have been 1.3 million visitors to the website, with a surge of 1.1K%. 
+
+![1100% surge in 2025 traffic](/uploads/2025-stats-for-eu-alternatives.png "1100% surge in 2025 traffic")
+
+Another interesting number is the “time on page,” which is 2m47s spent on average. This goes on to show that people are interested and engaging well with the library.
+
+## Reddit surpasses Google, while privacy-friendly search engines gain traction
+
+Look at the Top Sources report for 2025 so far:
+
+![top-sources-2025-eu-alternatives](/uploads/top-sources-2025-eu-alternatives.png "top-sources-2025-eu-alternatives")
+
+Google is typically the dominant search driver for most websites—but not here. Reddit ranks as the second-largest traffic source, bringing in 311K visitors—significantly more than Google (193K). This isn’t a regular thing we see with sites.
+
+This suggests that people aren’t just searching for alternatives but are actively discussing and recommending them in forums, subreddits, and privacy-conscious communities.
+
+But here’s another interesting insight: Privacy-friendly search engines are also key traffic sources:
+
+* DuckDuckGo: 33.8K visitors
+* Ecosia: 13.5K visitors
+* Qwant: 10.8K visitors
+
+This says something about the increasing preference for privacy-friendly tools, i.e., more people are actively using privacy-friendly search engines to discover other privacy-friendly alternatives.
+
+## Top 5 categories: What are people looking for?
+
+A quick look at the "Top Pages" report tells us about the most popular top 5 categories:
+
+\- Email providers
+
+\- Search Engines
+
+\- Cloud Computing Platforms
+
+\- Navigation Apps
+
+\- Web Analytics Services
+
+Upon expanding the report, we can take a deeper look at the most popular categories in terms of unique visitors, while comparing the engagement metrics.
+
+![top-pages-eu-alternatives](/uploads/top-pages-eu-alternatives.png "top-pages-eu-alternatives")
+
+**B2B categories win?**
+
+While categories like email providers, search engines, and navigation apps attract a large B2C audience, B2B categories are more diverse and consistently rank high. 
+
+Businesses are actively seeking privacy-friendly analytics, hosting, and infrastructure alternatives, driving growth in EU-built tools.
+
+## Not just a European trend—demand goes beyond the EU borders
+
+Looking at the [all-time Countries report](https://plausible.io/european-alternatives.eu?period=all&keybindHint=A&comparison=off&match_day_of_week=true): European countries make up the bulk of visitors (as expected), but the United States ranks fourth, sending over 100K visitors to the site! 
+
+Even Canada and India make an appearance in the top 25, contributing decent amounts of visitors to the site.
+
+If you scroll all the way down, or simply look at the “Map view,” there’s hardly any part of the globe that’s not participating in the shift towards privacy-focused digital tools.
+
+![map-view](/uploads/map-view.png "map-view")
+
+Privacy-conscious users are everywhere.
+
+## European countries leading (and lagging) in the shift to privacy-friendly tools
+
+Germany leads in visitor numbers, with 379K, and contributing 20.5% of the total traffic all-time! This is followed by the Netherlands (141K) and France (135K). These countries show significant engagement with European digital alternatives.
+
+On the lower end, Guernsey recorded 130 visitors, while regions like Vatican City State and Saint Martin (French part) had 3 each. The variation in engagement levels may reflect differences in population size, internet adoption rates, etc.
+
+## Which European tools are winning? 
+
+The dashboard has an [Outbound link click goal](https://plausible.io/docs/outbound-link-click-tracking) configured, which is useful in understanding which listed tools eventually attract real visitors. Once we filter the dashboard by this goal (see it [here](https://plausible.io/european-alternatives.eu?f=is,goal,Outbound%20Link:%20Click&period=all&keybindHint=A&comparison=off&match_day_of_week=true)), we can see which URLs were clicked.
+
+From these results, these are the top 10 tools receiving traffic from the EU alternatives website: 
+
+1. [Mailbox.org](https://mailbox.org/en/) (email provider)
+2. [ProtonMail](https://proton.me/mail) (email provider)
+3. [Soverin](https://soverin.com/) (email provider)
+4. [Startpage](https://www.startpage.com/) (search engine)
+5. [Qwant](https://www.qwant.com/) (search engine)
+6. [Posteo](https://posteo.de/en) (email provider)
+7. [Ecosia](https://www.ecosia.org/) (search engine)
+8. [Scaleway](https://www.scaleway.com/en/) (cloud provider)
+9. [Startmail](https://www.startmail.com/) (email provider)
+10. [Good search](https://good-search.org/en/) (search engine)
+
+And if we look at the all-time data, there’s a whopping 1.2M total outbound clicks from the website to such tools, that’s more than half of the total all-time visits to the library.
+
+![outbound-clicks](/uploads/outbound-clicks-.png "outbound-clicks")
+
+And conversions aren’t just from Europe—the U.S. audience alone has a 16.8% conversion rate (check [here](https://plausible.io/european-alternatives.eu?f=is,goal,Outbound%20Link:%20Click&f=is,country,US&l=US,United%20States&period=all&keybindHint=A&comparison=off&match_day_of_week=true))!
+
+## Need a hand in deciding which tools to go with?
+
+We recently vetted many EU-built B2B tools and picked out a few of our favourites. They’re all:
+
+* Built in the EU – Companies headquartered in a European country.
+* Hosted in the EU – Ensuring your data doesn’t leave the European borders and stays compliant with European privacy laws.
+* GDPR-compliant –  Tools that align with European data protection laws.
+* High quality – Competitive with mainstream solutions.
+* Privacy-focused – Respecting user data and following GDPR regulations.
+
+Check out our [handpicked list of 16 privacy-focused European tools](https://plausible.io/blog/european-privacy-friendly-tools-for-business).
+
+## Privacy-friendly web analytics is on the rise
+
+We started Plausible Analytics six years ago as a privacy-first, [GDPR-compliant](https://plausible.io/data-policy), [cookieless](https://plausible.io/blog/google-analytics-cookies) and muuuch [easier-to-use](https://plausible.io/simple-web-analytics) alternative to Google Analytics.
+
+So, we took a look at how our category is doing:
+
+* 5th most popular category in the library
+* 9th most visited page overall
+* More than a 2,700% increase in unique visitors in 2025
+
+The demand for privacy-friendly web analytics is booming. If you’re looking for an alternative, check out our [privacy-first approach](https://plausible.io/privacy-focused-web-analytics).
+
+👋