European alternatives to Meetup
The platform for organising in-person groups and events, now owned by Bending Spoons after passing through WeWork. A US-hosted service on AWS holding membership and location data.
Company information about Meetup
- Company
- Meetup LLC
- Headquarters
- New York, United States
- Founded
- 2002
- Data jurisdiction
- United States
- Ownership
- Acquired
- GDPR
- No
- Open source
- No
- Infrastructure
- Amazon AWS
Why people switch away from Meetup
Owned by an aggressive cost-cutter
Bending Spoons, which acquired Meetup out of WeWork's bankruptcy in 2024, has a documented record at sibling acquisitions like Evernote of gutting staff and sharply raising prices shortly after taking over.
Answers to US law
Meetup is a US company on AWS, putting membership and location data under the CLOUD Act, outside GDPR's direct reach.
Everyday annoyances
- Organiser fees keep rising. Running a group beyond a trial period requires a paid organiser subscription, and those fees have risen under new ownership.
- Spam and dead groups clutter search. Local listings can be full of inactive or spam groups that outnumber genuinely active ones.
- Notifications default to noisy. New members are opted into frequent email and app notifications that take deliberate effort to tune down.
- Uncertain roadmap post-acquisition. Ownership passing to Bending Spoons has left some longtime organisers unsure which features and pricing will survive the transition.
European alternatives to Meetup
French open-source federated event platform originally created by Framasoft and now maintained by French non-profit Kaihuri. Organise events and groups without ads, tracking, or data exploitation. Federated via ActivityPub: host your own instance or join an existing one.
Want more options? Browse all European Social media & communities alternatives →
People also replace
Facebook 
Eventbrite Start somewhere.
Switching everything overnight is not realistic. Start where it matters most: your email, your cloud storage, your business tools. Replace one thing at a time.
The European Alternative already exists.
Pick Europe.
Why avoid United States-owned services?
CLOUD Act
Forces US companies to hand over data stored anywhere in the world upon government request, including data on European servers.
FISA Section 702
Authorises mass surveillance of non-US persons using data held by US tech platforms, without a warrant or notification.
GDPR vs US law conflict
EU courts have repeatedly found that US surveillance law conflicts with European fundamental rights. Schrems I and II both invalidated EU-US data transfer agreements.