Replaces Instagram
European alternatives to Instagram
Photo and video sharing outside the US platforms
Browse the category: Photo and video sharing social networks · Microblogging services
Instagram is the photo and video social network owned by Meta. People post pictures, short videos and stories, follow accounts and discover material through an algorithmic feed, and businesses and creators use it as a shopfront with advertising, shopping features and direct messages behind it. Its focus on visual posts is what sets it apart from the other Meta networks.
The feed is ordered by a system you cannot see, the audience you build belongs to the platform, and the profiling behind the advertising has kept European regulators busy for years. A European alternative to Instagram gives you a different arrangement. Pixelfed is a photo sharing network in the fediverse, so your account can be followed from other services, Mastodon covers short posts and images in the same federated network, and BeReal takes a deliberately simple daily posting format.
European options 3
Our pick
Pixelfed
Open source federated photo sharing network
Pixelfed is open source software for sharing images on a federated social network. It is not one platform: many servers run the Pixelfed software and exchange posts through the ActivityPub protocol, the same protocol Mastodon uses, so you can follow and like accounts that live on another server. The project was started by the Canadian developer known as dansup.
Open sourceOpen sourceFree plan
FranceQuestions
Can I take my photos and followers with me?
Instagram offers a full data export of your posts, and that archive is yours to upload elsewhere. Followers do not transfer, so most people announce the move on both accounts for a while.
What does federated mean here?
Pixelfed and Mastodon are part of the fediverse, a set of servers that talk to each other, so someone on one server can follow an account on another. You pick a server, but you are not limited to the people on it.
Which European alternative is closest to Instagram?
Pixelfed is the closest in form, since it is built around photo posts and a visual feed. BeReal is a different proposition altogether, focused on one unedited post a day.