Non-EU vendorDevOpsHeadquarters: US

AWS CloudFormation: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

AWS CloudFormation is the infrastructure-as-code service of Amazon Web Services (AWS). In a template you describe which AWS resources you need, such as EC2 instances or RDS databases, and CloudFormation provisions and configures them as a stack. This lets you set up the same infrastructure repeatably across multiple regions and accounts, track changes through version control and delete a stack again. The service is available through the console, the API, the AWS CLI and SDKs, and it manages AWS resources only. It is a cloud service with no self-hosted edition and is not open source.

AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon, which is based in the United States, so US legislation such as the CLOUD Act can apply. Customers decide in which AWS Region their data is stored, and AWS offers a Data Processing Addendum with Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers to third countries. Because templates are specific to AWS resources, using CloudFormation increases dependence on AWS; organisations that value portability and independence from US providers can look at vendor-neutral tooling for infrastructure management.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with AWS CloudFormation pre-selected

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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 (EU, US, OTHER)
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 11, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EU, US, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	DevOps
Type	Product
Website	aws.amazon.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to AWS CloudFormation

The European alternatives to AWS CloudFormation come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 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

38 European DevOps 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 AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation 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.

AWS CloudFormation hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. 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.

AWS CloudFormation 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 AWS CloudFormation 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 AWS CloudFormation?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to AWS CloudFormation include Buddy, CFEngine and Checkmk. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to AWS CloudFormation?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to AWS CloudFormation include CFEngine, Checkmk, Codeberg and Eclipse Che. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is AWS CloudFormation GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

AWS CloudFormation is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. 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 11, 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 DevOps

DevOps: CI/CD, infrastructure as code, monitoring, container registries. 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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