Self-hosted / open sourceStorage & BackupHeadquarters: US

Barman: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Barman is an open-source backup and recovery manager for PostgreSQL databases. It relies on point-in-time recovery, so a database can be restored to a chosen moment, and it manages the backup and recovery phases of several servers from one central location. Barman is distributed under the GNU GPL 3 licence and is installed and run by the organisation itself on its own infrastructure. It is aimed at database administrators who currently use a commercial backup product for PostgreSQL and want a self-operated alternative.

Barman is maintained by EnterpriseDB (EDB), which is headquartered in the United States. Bain Capital Private Equity, a US investor, took a majority stake in EDB in 2022, so US law may apply to the company. The software itself does not send data to a vendor: backups stay on the servers the organisation operates, and the GPL licence allows the source code to be inspected and modified. For a European organisation the question is mainly about the maintaining company and its support contracts. Buyers of paid EDB support should therefore factor in US jurisdiction.

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Sovereignty score

69 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-3100
No hosting in Europe (US)
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-665
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 12, 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	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	USVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	Storage & Backup
Type	Product
Website	pgbarman.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Barman

The European alternatives to Barman 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

34 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 Barman

Barman 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.

Barman hosts data outside the EU (US). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

Barman 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 Barman 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 Barman?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Barman 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 Barman?

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

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

Barman is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 12, 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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