From zero to a few euros per month. The large majority of the 78 alternatives in our catalog are free or have a free tier; the paid services cluster around email, cloud storage and VPN, at about €3 to €5 per month. The full grid, verified on July 22, 2026 against official websites, is below.
Information verified on July 22, 2026
Data freely quotable with attribution (link to this page).
“Google is free anyway.” It is the most common objection, and it deserves a real, numbers-based answer rather than a slogan. What Google does not charge in euros, it funds through advertising profiling: your searches, your trips, your emails feed the machine. So the useful question is not “how much does Google cost?” but “how much does leaving it cost?”.
The answer fits in one grid. We verified it service by service against official websites, and it regenerates from our catalog at every re-verification: what you read here is exactly what the catalog entries show.
The full grid, category by category
Prices collected from official websites and verified on July 22, 2026 (same single source as every catalog entry). Out of 78 services: 68 are free or have a free tier (the price starts with “Free”/“Gratuit” in either catalog language, or the basic usage is included at no charge), 4 are hardware purchases, the rest are paid only. Table regenerated automatically from the catalog at each re-verification.
Free (personal and professional use). Paid Enterprise tier.
How to read these prices
The first lesson is obvious: free dominates. That is not a commercial accident, it is a matter of model. A large share of these tools are open source, backed by foundations or nonprofits, and live on donations rather than on your data.
Paid services, meanwhile, cluster around three uses: email, cloud storage and VPN. In other words, the services that store your belongings or carry your traffic, the ones where running servers costs money around the clock. Expect €3 to €5 per month per service, often less than your streaming subscription. For complete, itemized scenarios, from all-free to all-comfort, a dedicated page does the math.
Hardware is a case of its own: a NAS at home, a Fairphone or a home automation box are one-time purchases, not subscriptions. It is an upfront investment that replaces a monthly rent, and it is the path to maximum sovereignty: your files sleep at your place.
One last reading precaution: many of the listed prices are “billed annually” rates. The same service paid monthly often costs one or two euros more. Prices exclude promotions, and some providers list them before VAT.
What to remember
Leaving Google is not an expense, at worst it is a small budget: zero euros for search, the browser, messaging, maps or the office suite, and a handful of euros per month if you want email and cloud storage that do not profile you. The real spending you are already doing, it just never shows on your bank statement.
Every service in the grid has its detailed entry in the alternatives catalog, with its strengths, limits and migration difficulty. And if you do not know where to start, the assessment sets your priorities in five minutes.
Want the complete guide?
“Vivre sans Google” (in French) covers the full journey, service by service, with step-by-step migration guides.
Yes for most uses: Brave Search or Qwant for search, Signal for messaging, LibreOffice for the office suite, OsmAnd for maps, Joplin for notes. The limit shows up with storage: beyond a few GB of email or files, you need the paid tier.
Why pay when Google is free?
Because the two models do not sell the same thing. Google funds itself by exploiting your data for targeted advertising; a paid service funds itself with your €3 to €5 per month and has no need to profile you. The free assessment helps you spot the services where that switch matters most.
Are these prices up to date?
They were verified on July 22, 2026 against official websites, and the table is regenerated automatically from our catalog at every re-verification, planned quarterly. Promotions, monthly billing or VAT can shift the exact amount: whenever there is a gap, the service's entry in the catalog is the reference.
Behind the numbers: your privacy
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