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Contact Book: the EU alternative to Apple Contacts
Same job, hosted in the EU. Contact Book runs in Germany under German law - your data stays in EU jurisdiction end to end.
If your reason for moving off Apple Contacts is data sovereignty, the comparison gets simpler. Contact Book is hosted in Germany on infrastructure we operate ourselves - no US-headquartered company in the request path. The CLOUD Act does not reach what physically lives here.
At a glance
Apple Contacts is excellent at the phone-book job: end-to-end encrypted with Advanced Data Protection, beautifully integrated with Apple's stack, free with iCloud. Contact Book sits one layer above - the relationship log, life events, gifts, cadences. Run both: Apple holds the dialer-grade directory; we hold the texture.
EU jurisdiction
What 'EU-hosted' actually means here, end to end
Contact Book runs on dedicated machines we operate ourselves, physically located in Germany. There is no US-headquartered subprocessor in the request path - the data plane (your records, your files, your audit log) lives entirely in EU jurisdiction. Two third parties exist outside that boundary: Stripe (payment information only, under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework) and the mail relay for transactional email. Neither sees your records. Apple Contacts's setup is the variable - if their primary infra is US-based, the CLOUD Act applies regardless of what their privacy page claims.
Contact Book vs Apple Contacts: EU comparison
When to pick which
Pick Contact Book when
Pick Apple Contacts when
EU-jurisdiction questions
Specific to where the data lives, who can subpoena it, and what crosses borders.
Start with Contact Book
Free plan, no credit card. We host in Germany. Export + delete are self-serve.
Written by
Julia Yukovich
Co-Founder + CEO
Julia is one of the Co-Founders. She handles design, product direction, and most of the support replies that arrive in the morning.
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