List of free, open source and privacy respecting services and alternatives to privative services.
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Anonymity, Privacy, and Security are often used interchangeably, but they actually represent distinct concepts. It is important to understand the differences between them. Read more in this section below.
The primary focus of this list is to provide alternatives that prioritize privacy. These alternatives give you control over your data and do not collect or sell it.
- 2FA
- Analytics
- Android App Store
- Android Dialer
- Android File Manager
- Android Keyboard
- Android Launcher
- Artificial Intelligence
- Bookmarking
- Captchas
- Commenting Engines (disqus)
- Cloaking
- Cloud Storage
- Databases
- Dating Apps
- Design Tools
- Developer Tools
- Domain Registrar
- Download Manager
- Encryption
- File Management and Sharing
- Fitness and Health
- Fonts
- Forms
- Games
- Home Assistants
- Instant Messaging
- Link in Bio Tools
- Link Shorteners
- Location tracking
- Mail Services
- Maps and Navigation
- Media Streaming Platforms
- Music Recognition (Shazam-like)
- Notes and Tasks
- Office
- Online Phone Providers (SMS)
- Operating Systems
- Password Managers
- Pastebin and Secret Sharing
- Payments
- Personal Finances
- Photo Editing and Management
- Photo Storage
- Privacy Tools
- Remote Access and Control
- Search Engines
- Social Networks and Platforms
- Speech to Text
- Teamworking Tools
- Text To Speech
- Translation
- Uncategorized
- Utilities
- Video and Audio Conferencing
- Video Editing
- Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
- Web Browser
Avoid using apps that won't let you export your keys easily.
- Authy
- Google Authenticator
Instead use
Aegis - A free, secure and open source app for Android to manage your 2-step verification tokens. Supports variety of imports from other apps (Google Authenticator, Authy etc.), vault encryption and exporting keys (plaintext or encrypted).
- ente Auth - A free, cross platform, end-to-end encrypted and open source app for managing your 2-step verification tokens. From the makers of ente Photos, and uses the same battle tested infrastructure. Needs an ente.io account.
- Owky - Free and Open Source Two-Factor Authenticator for IOS users.
- RaivoOTP - A native, lightweight and secure one-time-password (OTP) solution for iOS users.
Avoid any analytics service that comes from Google, Facebook, Microsoft or any private service. These kind of analytics hurt user privacy.
Instead use
- Matomo - Google Analytics alternative that protects your data and your customers' privacy.
- Plausible - Simple and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics.
- Umami - A simple, fast, website analytics alternative to Google Analytics.
- Nullitics - Zero-effort open-source cheap analytics.
- Ackee - Self-hosted website analytics.
- Shynet - Modern, privacy-friendly, and detailed web analytics that works without cookies or JS.
- Pirsch - Pirsch is a simple, privacy-friendly, open-source alternative to Google Analytics — lightweight, cookie-free and easily integrated into any website or backend.
- Swetrix - Privacy-focused, fully cookieless and opensource (and selfhostable) web-analytics service.
- Cabin - Privacy-first, carbon conscious web analytics.
- Aptabase - Open-source, privacy-first and simple analytics for mobile and desktop apps.
Avoid
- Google Play Store
Instead use
- F-Droid - F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform.
- Droid-ify - Lightweight F-Droid client with Material UI.
- Aurora Droid - Aurora Droid is a modern FOSS client for F-Droid.
- Foxy Droid - Unofficial F-Droid client in the style of the classic one.
- FossDroid - Fossdroid's aim is to promote free and open source apps on the Android platform: newest, trendiest and the most popular ones.
- SkyDroid - Decentralized App Store for Android
- Obtainium - Get app updates directly from the source.
- Accrescent - A novel Android app store focused on security, privacy, and usability.
- Aurora Store - Aurora Store is an open-source alternative Google Play Store frontend client with privacy and modern design in mind.
Avoid
Third-party dialers found on the play store. They may contain ads/trackers and may ask for unnecessary permissions.
Instead use
- Simple Dialer - A lightweight app for handling your calls, no matter where are you. Comes with a handy call log for easy call initiation.
- Koler - Uniquely stylized phone app with customizable features.
Avoid
Preinstalled file managers and third-party file manager apps found on the play store. They may contain ads/trackers and may ask for unnecessary permissions.
Instead use
- Simple File Manager - A simple file manager for browsing and editing files and directories.
- Amaze File Manager - Simple and attractive Material Design file manager for Android.
- Material Files - An open source Material Design file manager, for Android 5.0+.
- Ghost Commander - Dual-panel file manager.
Avoid
- GBoard (Google)
- SwiftKey
Instead use
- OpenBoard - 100% FOSS keyboard, based on AOSP.
- FlorisBoard - FlorisBoard is a free and open-source keyboard for Android 6.0+ devices. It aims at being modern, user-friendly and customizable while fully respecting your privacy. Currently in early-beta state.
- AnySoftKeyboard - The only Android keyboard you'll ever need. Free as in speech and Free as in beer.
- Indic Keyboard - Indic Keyboard is a versatile keyboard for Android users who wish to use Indic and Indian languages to type messages, compose emails and generally prefer to use them in addition to English on their phone.
- Simple Keyboard - Simply keyboard and nothing more.
Avoid
Third-party launchers found on the play store. They may contain ads/trackers and may ask for unnecessary permissions.
Instead use
- Lawnchair - No clever tagline needed.
- OpenLauncher - Customizable and Open Source Launcher for Android.
- KISS - Lightning fast, open-source, < 200kb Android launcher.
- Olauncher - Minimal AF (ad-free) launcher app for Android.
- Posidon Launcher - Posidon launcher is a minimal, one page homescreen with a vertical scrolling feed.
- Pie Launcher - Android home screen launcher that uses a dynamic pie menu instead of fixed positioned icons.
- Simple App Launcher - A simple holder for favourite apps for quick & easy app launcher icon management.
- Rootless Pixel Launcher - The Launcher3 fork known as "Rootless Pixel Launcher".
- Bliss Launcher - The default launcher of the /e/ Android-based OS. It allows users to easily create and browse group of apps and it displays notification badges on app icons.
When using cloud-based AI services, the data you input is often collected and stored by the service provider. This may include not only the content of your requests but also metadata, such as timestamps or IP addresses. Third-party servers may grant access to your data to their employees, partners, or even other users, depending on their privacy policies. Data may be used for various purposes, including model training, research, or even marketing activities. Your requests to a third-party AI service may be tied to your user information and payment details, linking your data to your identity.
- llama.cpp - Inference of Facebook's LLaMA model in pure C/C++ so it can run locally on a CPU.
- LocalAI - Self-hosted, community-driven simple local OpenAI-compatible API written in go. Can be used as a drop-in replacement for OpenAI, running on CPU with consumer-grade hardware.
- Turbopilot - Turbopilot is an open source large-language-model based code completion engine that runs locally on CPU.
Go to the Text To Speech section.
- Stable Diffusion - High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models.
- Stable Diffusion Web UI - A browser interface for Stable Diffusion.
Avoid
- Pocket (Formerly Read It Later) - Bad privacy policy. Apps have trackers and requires many permissions.
- Evernote Web Clipper - Bad privacy policy. Apps have many trackers and require too many permissions.
Instead use
- Wallabag - Open-source, optionally self-hosted, read it later server. Provides paid hosted service with privacy in mind.
- Shiori
- LinkAce
- LinkDing
- Hypothesis - Annotate the web, with anyone, anywhere.
- Kobuddy - Get your Kobo e-reader device bookmarks and annotations in a .txt file.
Avoid
Google captchas use cookies to track users and rank their IPs.
- Google reCAPTCHA
Instead use
- hCaptcha - Privacy-first CAPTCHA for web, mobile, and more.
- mCaptcha (repo) - An open-source CAPTCHA system with seamless UX. mCaptcha uses SHA256 based proof-of-work (PoW) to rate limit users.
- OOPSpam - No-captcha, privacy-friendly anti-spam, anti-bot API. Requires no personal data for detection. Supports popular platforms like WordPress. Privacy commitment in their mission statement.
Avoid
- Disqus - Many trackers are in their sites. Disqus collects (as per their Privacy Policy): IP address, unique Cookie ID, Device ID, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access the Service.
Instead use
- Isso - A lightweight, self hosted, commenting server written in Python and JavaScript. It aims to be a drop-in replacement for Disqus.
- Commento - Commento is a fast, privacy-focused commenting platform. Can be selfhosted or use their SaaS.
- Remark42 - Self-hosted, lightweight, and simple (yet functional) comment engine, which doesn't spy on users.
- Fawkes - privacy preserving tool against facial recognition systems.
- CloakMe - Web interface for Fawkes algorithm.
- ImageScrubber - A friendly browser-based tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests (hosted version provided by everestpipkin).
Avoid
- Google Drive - Google owned, so privacy policy is very bad. The data is stored in their remote servers where you lose control of it. They use trackers. No encryption available.
- DropBox - Bad privacy policy. The app has various trackers and requires many permissions.
- OneDrive - Microsoft owned, privacy policy is very bad. The data is stored in their remote servers where you lose control of it. They use trackers. No encryption available.
Instead use
- Nextcloud - The open source self-hosted productivity platform that keeps you in control.
- Seafile - High performance file syncing and sharing. It includes a Wiki, WYSIWYG editing and other knowledge management features.
- Peergos - Secure and private space online where you can store, share and view your photos, videos, music and documents. Also includes a calendar, news feed, task lists, chat and email client. Open source and self-hostable.
- Proton Drive - End-to-end encrypted Swiss vault for your files that protects your data. Read this article over Climate activist arrest.
- PrivateStorage - Accountless, privacy-focused cloud storage and folder synchronization with client-side encryption.
- Skiff Drive - Skiff Drive protects your dataq with end-to-end encryption.
Other useful tools
- Cryptomator - Cryptomator encrypts your data quickly and easily. Afterwards you upload them protected to your favorite cloud service
- Syncthing - Continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time, safely protected from prying eyes.
- Rclone - Rclone is a command line program to manage files on cloud storage. It is a feature rich alternative to cloud vendors' web storage interfaces and like the tools listed above enables encryption for encrypting files in the cloud.
- Restic - Restic is also command line program to manage files on various cloud storage providers. Restic uses encryption by default. Few noteworthy features of restic include browsing through storage as git like snapshots at no extra storage cost, deduplication and significant savings through compression.
Avoid using privative databases which you don't control such as Google Firebase.
Instead use
- Appwrite - Secure open-source backend server for web, mobile & Flutter developers.
- Supabase - Open source Firebase alternative (Limited self-hosting)
- Pocketbase - Open Source backend in 1 file written in Go.
- CondensationDB [Inactive] - Condensation is an open-source zero trust, distributed database enabling to build modern applications while ensuring data ownership and security.
- Beekeeper Studio - Open Source SQL Editor and Database Manager with a privacy commitment in their mission statement.
Avoid using privative IDEs that are full of trackers and telemetry.
Instead use
- Neovim - Hyperextensible Vim-based text editor.
- VSCodium - Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VSCode. Vscode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking.
Apps such as Tinder collect and sell your personal intimate information. Tinder in particular has been found to charge users up to five times more for same service, extrapolate estimations on your intelligence and other psychometrics and sell it to third-parties, it may know more about you than yourself, and many more bad things you can find on the internet.
Avoid
- Grindr
- Badoo
- Lovoo
Instead use
- Alovoa - Free and open-source dating platform that respects your privacy.
Adobe's dominance in design tools restricts designers' choices and compromises their privacy. Its lack of Linux support, confines designers to Windows or macOS. Plus, Adobe's data collection via Creative Cloud and trackers further amplifies privacy concerns. They also may be using users' work to train their AIs, potentially causing intellectual property problems. For these reasons, designers can consider using open-source, privacy-respecting alternatives, bypassing most of these issues.
Instead use
- Scribus - a free and open-source desktop publishing (DTP) software available for most desktop operating systems. It is designed for layout, typesetting, and preparation of files for professional-quality image-setting equipment. Scribus can also create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms.
Instead use
- GIMP - A free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized tasks. It is not designed to be used for drawing, though some artists and creators have used it in this way.
- Inkscape - A free and open-source vector graphics editor for GNU/Linux, Windows and macOS. It offers a rich set of features and is widely used for both artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, typography, diagramming and flowcharting.
- Krita - A free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital art and 2D animation.
- Excalidraw - Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams.
Instead use
- Penpot - Penpot is an Open Source design and prototyping platform for product teams.
Avoid using domain registrars who are privacy invasive.
Instead use
- Njalla - Privacy-aware domain service, sitting in between the domain service registrations and you, acting like a privacy shield.
- OrangeWebsite
- 1984 Hosting
- Persepolis Download Manager - Persepolis is a download manager & a GUI for Aria2. It's written in Python. Persepolis is a sample of free and open source software. It's developed for GNU/Linux distributions, BSDs, MacOS, and Microsoft Windows.
- uGet Download Manager - uGet is a lightweight yet powerful Open Source download manager for GNU/Linux developed with GTK+, which also comes packaged as a portable Windows app. It is also available for Android.
- Motrix - A full-featured download manager.
- Xtreme Download Manager - Xtreme Download Manager (XDM) is a powerful tool to increase download speeds up to 500%, save streaming videos from YouTube, DailyMotion, Facebook, Vimeo, Google Video and 1000+ other websites, resume broken/dead downloads, schedule and convert downloads.
- axel - Lightweight CLI download accelerator. It supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and FTPS protocols.
Remember: Without strong encryption, you will be spied on systematically by lots of people.
- Veracrypt - VeraCrypt is a free open source disk encryption software for Windows, macOS and Linux.
- Shufflecake - Free open source, plausible deniability for multiple hidden filesystems on Linux
- Hat.sh - A Free, Fast, Secure and Serverless File Encryption.
- Cryptomator - Cryptomator encrypts your data quickly and easily. Afterwards you upload them protected to your favorite cloud service.
- Stegcloak - Hide secrets with invisible characters in plain text securely using passwords.
- Picocrypt - A very small (hence "Pico"), very simple, yet very secure file encryption tool.
- Photok - Photok is a free Photo-Safe. It stores your photos encrypted on your device and hides them from others.
- Cryptsetup - Full disk encryption for Linux. Cryptsetup is a utility used to conveniently set up disk encryption based on the DMCrypt kernel module.
Avoid
- WeTransfer - Bad privacy policy. Files are not e2e encrypted. Website has many analytics and trackers.
- SendAnywhere - No e2e encryption. Website has loads of analytics and trackers from Facebook, Google, Cloudflare...
Instead use
- Blaze - A fast, p2p and radically different way to transfer files.
- Blindsend - Open source tool for private, end-to-end encrypted file exchange.
- Croc - Easily and securely send things from one computer to another.
- Dat-cp - Copy files between hosts on a network using the peer-to-peer Dat network.
- Destiny - Send files directly to the receiver in real-time. Developed for and with HROs as a free Privacy Enhancing Technology alternative.
- Lufi - Let's Upload that FIle — File sharing software.
- Localsend - Share files to nearby devices. Free, open source, cross-platform.
- Magic Wormhole - Get things from one computer to another, safely.
- OnionShare - An open source tool that lets you securely and anonymously share files, host websites, and chat with friends using the Tor network.
- Paperless - [Now archived] Scan, index, and archive all of your paper documents.
- Paperless-ng - [inactive] A supercharged version of paperless: scan, index and archive all your physical documents.
- Paperless-ngx - A community-supported supercharged version of paperless based on paperless-ng
- PairDrop - An improved version of Snapdrop that also allows you to pair devices and share files outside your network.
- Portal - A command-line file transfer utility for sending encrypted files from any computer to another.
- QRcp - Transfer files over wifi from your computer to your mobile device by scanning a QR code without leaving the terminal.
- Send - Simple, private file sharing. (Mozilla Send Fork)
- Sharik - Sharik works with Wi-Fi connection or Tethering (Wi-Fi Hotspot). No internet connection needed. Available for Android, iOS, Linux, MacOS & Windows.
- Snapdrop - A Progressive Web App for local file sharing inspired by Apple's Airdrop.
- Winden - A convenient version of Magic Wormhole you can use from within your browser. No need to install an app.
- Yopass - Secure sharing of secrets, passwords and files.
Your health is a very important piece of your private data and you should care a lot about it. Also, health related data is among the most coveted. Please don't use apps from Google, Fitbit, Huawei, Xiaomi or any company that seeks the gathering of your personal data.
If you need an app for menstrual cycle tracking please don't use any apps like Clue, Period Tracker, etc. Those cute pink apps are greedy for your menstrual cycle and intimate life data and will sell it for sure, protect your private life. Check the list below and you will find nice alternatives.
Instead use
- wger - A free, open source, self-hosted web application that manages your exercises, workouts and nutrition.
- workout.lol - A small web application to create workouts based on your available equipment and the muscles you want to train that you can selfhost.
- OpenFoodFacts - Open Food Facts is a food products database made by everyone, for everyone. You can use it to make better food choices.
- Fasten - Fasten is an open-source, self-hosted, personal/family electronic medical record aggregator, designed to integrate with 1000's of insurances/hospitals/clinics.
Avoid
- Google Fonts (no selfhosted)
Instead use
- coolLabs Fonts - A privacy-friendly drop-in replacement for Google Fonts.
