EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorCDN, DNS & DomainsHeadquarters: US

Amazon CloudFront: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Amazon CloudFront is the content delivery network of Amazon Web Services. It delivers websites, dynamic content and APIs (including gRPC and WebSockets), live and on-demand video, software updates and IoT over-the-air updates through a globally distributed network of points of presence, using intelligent routing to reduce latency. It offers traffic encryption and access controls, works with AWS Shield Standard against DDoS attacks, and lets customers run code at the edge with serverless compute. It is a managed cloud service configured through AWS.

AWS is a US company, so CloudFront is subject to US law, including the CLOUD Act, even when content is served from European locations. AWS states that customers can determine where their data is stored, including the geographic region, and that its GDPR data processing addendum with Standard Contractual Clauses is part of the AWS Service Terms. AWS also notes that customers can move data from the EEA to non-EEA countries, including the United States, regardless of the region selected. CloudFront is not open source and has no self-hosted variant.

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Sovereignty score
27 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-350
    Hosting inside and outside Europe (US, EU)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
    Key management with a non-European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-615
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked September 21, 2026
HeadquartersUS (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionOnly for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingUS, EUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalAMAZON-02 - Amazon.com, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryCDN, DNS & Domains
TypeProduct
Websiteaws.amazon.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Amazon CloudFront

The European alternatives to Amazon CloudFront come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

14 European CDN, DNS & Domains vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Amazon CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

Amazon CloudFront hosts data in US, EU. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Amazon CloudFront is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Amazon CloudFront together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Amazon CloudFront?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Amazon CloudFront include Bunny.net, KeyCDN and Gcore. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Amazon CloudFront?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Amazon CloudFront include deSEC and PowerDNS. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Amazon CloudFront GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Amazon CloudFront is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on September 21, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in CDN, DNS & Domains

CDN, DNS & Domains: Content delivery networks, DNS services and domain registration. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

Also in this category

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8 European alternatives to Amazon CloudFront — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score