madman_devShow HN: European alternatives to Google, Apple, Dropbox and 120 US apps
I’m working on a free and open-source invoice generator: https://easyinvoicepdf.com
- No sign-up, works entirely in-browser
- Live PDF preview + instant download
- VAT EU support
- Shareable invoice links
- Multi-language (10+) & multi-currency (100+)
- Multiple templates (incl. Stripe-style)
- Mobile-friendly
- QR code support
GitHub: https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf
Would love feedback, contributions, or ideas for other templates/features.
The project has no backend and is purely browser-based, but I’m based in Europe and developing the project here, so I consider it a European project.
PS: e-invoice is wip (Ksef, XRechnung, Factur-X)
This is very good, because billing the EU is quite strict, and having someone get the format right for me is super useful :)
I just made my own invoice generator using a json spec and a HTML -> PDF pipeline that wasn't so simple to get going. I might use this!
Can't we just use claude desktop / cli to generate an invoice. In my experience if you provide some skills and access to some data it can generate pretty consistent invoices. No other tools needed at all.
Can you make some of my repeating settings savable? If I have to send invoices to 5 clients I'd prefer to not have to fill in the same stuff over and over again!
The affiliate information shows that it the website shows mostly / only affiliate offers, and omits (intentionally?) much better a lternatives like posteo.de for email.
Listed vendors like OVHcloud must follow the US cloud act, so not really independent from US.
Just advertising, no real privacy focused.
Domain is registered 23 March 2026. This is not a real product, with zero effort put into it.
The domain registration date doesn’t tell anything about the amount of effort put in it. I usually register the domains of my side-projects only when I’m at 80% done; otherwise I would buy dozens of domains I would never use.
The website uses Cloudflare for hosting. If they were just even a little bit serious, they wouldn’t have used a US provider for hosting.
If you were just a little bit serious you wouldn’t be discussing this on a site run by Y-Combinator!
(the “angry” comments are so tiring)
They’re pointing out the hypocrisy in this website. The comment itself isn’t hypocritical as they haven’t taken a stance on US versus EU services.
They didn’t explicitly point to hypocrisy as the thing that makes it “unserious.” Actually I think a lot of serious projects are a little bit hypocritical, a little bit of hypocrisy is often the cost of contact with reality.
In this case it isn’t even clear where the hypocrisy comes from, though. It’s a service for looking up other services. Does it even handle any PII?
If you want to help orgs who have come to the conclusion they need to diversify to EU services, it does not mean you have to have come to the same conclusion! Also, it's not the same kind of dependency if you get or buy something one-off from a website like this, as if you build your org on top of a single platform/jurisdiction.
Maybe it was added in the meanwhile, but I see Posteo under email. Also, disputable if Posteo is really better, as it highly depend on your requirements. I dismissed it for some reason when choosing and went with mailbox.org, which is also listed.
The information is also not stating that all links are affiliate, just that the site does contain them and some might make them money.
only-eu.eu registered on Porkbun LLC and hosted on Cloudflare, Inc
https://whois.eurid.eu/en/search/?domain=only-eu
MX points to route1.mx.cloudflare.net as well.
they should use their own product before giving others advice.
> registered on Porkbun LLC and hosted on Cloudflare, Inc
And is built with Astro, which was created by an American, existed as an American company, and then was absorbed by Cloudflare.
Europe doesn’t do software better - not because it can’t, but because it can’t afford to drop the GDP of a country to build a single app like some of its US counterparts can.
It might feel performative to some people, but Europe just doesn’t trust the US, and arguably shouldn’t. So it’s not about demonstrating superiority in software, but rather showing that there are alternatives you can choose if you want to.