European alternatives to Google Drive

A German procurement team runs a Schrems II transfer impact assessment on where company files sit. A client asks a services firm to confirm its documents never leave EU jurisdiction. An organisation wants its files out of reach of US data requests, full stop. All three land on the same product: Google Drive, the storage layer of Google Workspace, the place a generation of teams keeps files and the home of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. It is also a Google product (Google LLC, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., publicly listed on NASDAQ as GOOGL), hosted on Google's global infrastructure; Google offers EU data regions for Workspace, but that does not change who legally owns the company.

Thirteen European cloud-storage alternatives are mapped against Google Drive here, each checked against the same questions: who legally owns the company, where does the data physically sit, are files end-to-end encrypted, and does the platform hold a recognised European compliance framework (ISO 27001, BSI C5, EUCS, SecNumCloud)? Because Google Drive is also a collaboration tool, we note which alternatives pair with a European office suite for Docs/Sheets-style co-editing.

The top three: Proton Drive has the strongest privacy posture (Switzerland, Geneva, zero-knowledge end-to-end encryption, ISO 27001 + SOC 2, Foundation-owned), Tresorit is the enterprise standard (Zurich, zero-knowledge E2E, Swiss-Post-owned, CLOUD Act exposure: Material via its sub-processor chain, while file contents stay end-to-end encrypted), and kDrive by Infomaniak is the best-value all-rounder with built-in office collaboration (Geneva, own Swiss data centres, ISO 27001 + B Corp).

What actually transfers when you move from Google Drive to a European cloud-storage provider?

• File sync across Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. Every alternative ships native apps.
• Shared folders and shared links with role-based permissions.
• File version history and recovery (on most providers).
• A drive you can mount or sync, exactly like Drive's desktop client.
• On the providers that pair with OnlyOffice or Collabora (Nextcloud, kDrive), real-time co-editing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with Office format compatibility.
• On the encrypted providers, a stronger confidentiality guarantee than Drive: zero-knowledge end-to-end encryption from a non-US company.

What stays behind:

• Native Google Docs / Sheets / Slides and their deepest real-time multi-user editing at scale. OnlyOffice and Collabora cover the same ground for most teams, but the very largest simultaneous-editing scenarios are Google's strong suit.
• The Workspace fabric: Gmail, Meet, and Drive woven together with shared admin and SSO.
• Google's search-across-everything and the AI features (Gemini in Workspace).
• Tight third-party app integrations built specifically for the Google Drive API.

Takeout handles the files; rebuilding share links and co-editing habits is the real work. Six steps:

1. Export with Google Takeout. Go to takeout.google.com, select Drive (and Docs/Sheets/Slides), and choose the export. Native Google formats export as Microsoft Office or OpenDocument files, so they remain editable in any European office suite. For Workspace tenants, run Takeout per user or use the admin data-export tool.
2. Pick storage-only or storage-plus-office. If you only need files, any provider here works. If your team lives in Docs/Sheets, choose a provider that pairs with OnlyOffice or Collabora. kDrive ships office editing, and Nextcloud integrates both.
3. Install the new provider and sync up. Install the desktop and mobile apps for your chosen provider (Proton Drive, kDrive, pCloud, or another) and move the Takeout export into its sync folder. The folder hierarchy uploads as-is.
4. Re-establish sharing. Drive share links do not transfer; reissue shared folders and links in the new tool. Map your most-used shared drives first.
5. Run both in parallel. Keep Drive live for a few weeks, verify files and any co-editing workflows on every device, and confirm external collaborators can access what they need. On zero-knowledge providers the first sync is slower because files are encrypted client-side.
6. Wind down Drive last. Once the new provider is trusted, reduce your Google One / Workspace storage. Keep a read-only Drive around briefly for anything addressed to old share links, then export and close it.

Find your scenario below:

• You want the strongest privacy and end-to-end encryption by default. Start with Proton Drive (Switzerland, Geneva, zero-knowledge E2E, ISO 27001 + SOC 2, Foundation-owned). Free 5 GB tier; Drive Plus from ~€4/month for 200 GB, with Proton Docs for encrypted collaborative documents. If you also want private mail, calendar, VPN, and a password manager from one vendor, the Proton ecosystem consolidates all of it.
• You are an organisation that wants enterprise-grade E2E with a state-anchored owner. Start with Tresorit (Switzerland, Zurich, zero-knowledge E2E, owned by Swiss Post, ISO 27001, broad regulated-industry compliance).
• You want the best value all-rounder with built-in Docs/Sheets-style collaboration. Start with kDrive by Infomaniak (Switzerland, Geneva, own Swiss data centres, ISO 27001 + B Corp, from ~€4.42/month for 3 TB). Drive plus office editing, mail, and meet from one independent Swiss company.
• You want to replace Workspace, not just Drive, and own the stack. Start with Nextcloud (Germany, open-source, self-hostable on your own server or an EU host) paired with OnlyOffice or Collabora for real-time office co-editing, Talk for messaging, and Groupware for mail/calendar. The closest single-stack Workspace replacement under your own control.
• You want a fully-German vendor or the cheapest encrypted option. Start with luckycloud (Berlin, own German data centres, zero-knowledge, ISO 27001 + BSI) or Filen (Recklinghausen, German data centres, zero-knowledge E2E, from ~€1.99/month). Koofr (Slovenia, German-hosted) and Internxt (Spain, open-source, post-quantum, lifetime plans) are other strong low-cost EU picks.

What decides it, in the end, is a single constraint: end-to-end encryption, real-time office collaboration, lowest cost, or owning the infrastructure yourself, and the table above is built to sort on each.

For a shortlist filtered to one jurisdiction, our German cloud providers and French cloud providers pages rank options by hosting region and CLOUD Act exposure.