EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorStorage & BackupHeadquarters: US

Amazon S3: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an object storage service from Amazon Web Services. Data is stored as objects in buckets and is used for data lakes, websites, mobile applications, backup and restore, archiving and enterprise applications. The service offers several storage classes, versioning, Object Lock for write-once storage, replication and lifecycle rules. It is accessed through the AWS console, the command line, SDKs and a REST API. S3 is delivered only as a managed cloud service and is not open source.

Amazon is a US company, so AWS is subject to US law. When you create a bucket you choose the AWS Region; according to AWS, objects stored in a Region never leave it unless you transfer or replicate them. European Regions are available, including Frankfurt, Ireland, Paris, Milan, Spain, Stockholm and Zurich. AWS also documents the European Sovereign Cloud as a separate partition and describes it as a new, independent cloud for Europe. For a European organisation, the jurisdiction of the provider matters alongside the choice of Region.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Amazon S3 pre-selected
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, APAC)
  • 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 October 1, 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, EU, APACVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalAMAZON-02 - Amazon.com, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryStorage & Backup
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 S3

The European alternatives to Amazon S3 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

32 European Storage & Backup 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 S3

Amazon S3 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 S3 hosts data in US, EU, APAC. 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 S3 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 S3 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 S3?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Amazon S3 include Cubbit, Impossible Cloud and OVHcloud. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Amazon S3?

Our list of EU alternatives to Amazon S3 is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is Amazon S3 GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Amazon S3 is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU, APAC. 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 October 1, 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 Storage & Backup

Storage & Backup: Business storage, backup solutions, object storage and data recovery. 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.

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8 European alternatives to Amazon S3 — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score