I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

Summary

For a long time, the narrative has been that if you want privacy and data sovereignty, you have to sacrifice usability. But after settling into this new stack, I’ve realized that isn’t true anymore. In fact, most of these tools aren’t just more private; they are significantly better than the US-based giants I left behind.Here is a breakdown of the tools I’m using, the money I’m saving, and the few hurdles I’m still trying to jump over.by the way, this post is for personal setups not for companies. Yet, I think most tools can be used for teams and companies too.The biggest impact on this migration has come from Proton. They have matured from a simple encrypted email provider into a (almost) full-suite productivity powerhouse.My subscription now covers:Mail & Calendar: Encrypted and clean.Drive: Secure cloud storage, having docs for a while, and now also tables.Proton Pass: A solid password manager with 2FA integration.VPN: Fast and reliable.Standard Notes: My go-to for note-taking, now under the Proton umbrella.Lumo AI: A privacy-first GenAI, I’m not yet frequently using it, but we will talk about it later.Everything is integrated and the user experience is superb. I’m also eagerly awaiting the release of Proton Meet to complete the suite.This entire setup replaces for me my Google Drive and Gmail ecosystem. Plus NordVPN, Notion, 1Password and Authenticator. Curious? I will drop you my referral link here.AI is the hardest thing to decouple from Big Tech, but improvements are happening fast here, too.For privacy-first GenAI tasks within my workflow, I’m using Lumo AI. It’s great for quick, private queries.However, sometimes you need raw power. For that, I started using Mammouth. I use this less for privacy reasons and more for the sheer value and flexibility. Getting access to every major AI model (including image generation) for just €10 is incredible value.My default for Mammouth looks like this. You can sort them in your favourite order; whatever is leftmost is you...