EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceStorage & BackupHeadquarters: DE

Bareos: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Bareos is open-source backup and recovery software licensed under AGPLv3. It backs up physical systems, virtual machines, databases and applications to disk, tape or S3-compatible object storage. Bareos supports Linux, Windows, macOS and FreeBSD, and offers full, differential, incremental and Always Incremental backups, encrypted communication between components, role-based access control and client-side encryption. The project originated as a fork of Bacula. Organisations install and operate the software themselves; paid subscriptions provide maintained packages and support, along with consulting, training and sponsored development.

Bareos is run by Bareos GmbH & Co. KG, located in Cologne, Germany. Because the source code is public and you run the software yourself, you decide where backup data is kept, for example on your own disks or tape within the EU. The code can be inspected and adapted. This makes Bareos suitable for organisations that want backups under their own control and European jurisdiction.

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Sovereignty score
94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-390
    Self-hostable: encryption keys under your own control
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-680
    Open source: low switching costs
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-6100
    Source code auditable, forkable and self-hostable

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
HeadquartersDE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalHETZNER-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
CategoryStorage & Backup
TypeProduct
Websitebareos.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 Bareos

The European alternatives to Bareos 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 Bareos

Bareos is headquartered in DE and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Bareos scores best on data residency.

Bareos is open source. You can audit the source code, self-host the software and keep the encryption keys under your own control. Switching is easier because data and software are not tied to a single party.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Bareos 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 Bareos?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Bareos include Acronis, Atempo and Bacula Systems. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Bareos?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Bareos include Bacula Systems and BorgBackup. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Bareos GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Bareos is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Bareos an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

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 Bareos — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score