Non-EU vendorData Governance & MDMHeadquarters: US

AWS Glue Data Catalog: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

AWS Glue Data Catalog is the central metadata catalogue within AWS Glue, the serverless data integration service from Amazon Web Services. The catalogue stores the location, schema and runtime metrics of data sources in databases and tables. Crawlers discover schemas automatically, including for sources outside AWS, and the catalogue manages schema versions and column statistics. It works with Amazon Athena, EMR, Redshift Spectrum and SageMaker, and with AWS Lake Formation for fine-grained access permissions. Metadata can be encrypted with AWS KMS. It is a fully managed cloud service; there is no self-hosting option.

AWS is a US company and subject to US jurisdiction, including the CLOUD Act. The service is not open source. AWS Glue is available in several European regions, including Frankfurt, Ireland, Paris, Stockholm, Milan, Spain and Zurich, so metadata can be stored in the EU. A European region does not change US control over the provider. For organisations with strict sovereignty requirements, the catalogue is also closely intertwined with other AWS services.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with AWS Glue Data Catalog 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 (US, EU, CH, 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 9, 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	US, EU, CH, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	Data Governance & MDM
Type	Product
Website	aws.amazon.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to AWS Glue Data Catalog

The European alternatives to AWS Glue Data Catalog come from our knowledge base of over 8,000 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

23 European Data Governance & MDM 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 Glue Data Catalog

AWS Glue Data Catalog 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 Glue Data Catalog hosts data in US, EU, CH, 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 Glue Data Catalog 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 Glue Data Catalog 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 Glue Data Catalog?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to AWS Glue Data Catalog include Accutics, Amnesia and Anjana Data. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to AWS Glue Data Catalog?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to AWS Glue Data Catalog include Amnesia, ARX Data Anonymization Tool and Data Contract CLI. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is AWS Glue Data Catalog GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

AWS Glue Data Catalog is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU, CH, 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 9, 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 Data Governance & MDM

Data Governance & MDM: Data catalogues, lineage, data quality, ownership and master data management. 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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