Self-hosted / open sourceBrowserHeadquarters: US

Basilisk: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Basilisk is a free, open-source desktop web browser built on the Unified XUL Platform (UXP). It is an updated fork of Firefox that keeps the look and feel of Firefox versions before 57 and uses the Goanna rendering engine, which it shares with Pale Moon. UXP emphasises maintainability and keeping features and extensions usable over long periods. Basilisk runs on Windows and Linux, with experimental support for FreeBSD and macOS. It is installed locally as an application; there is no hosted service behind it.

Basilisk is maintained independently by the Basilisk Browser Development Team and is not affiliated with Mozilla. According to Wikipedia, the source code is under the MPL-2.0 licence, while the official binaries are distributed as proprietary freeware. Because the browser runs on your device, no vendor-operated cloud holds your data, but you remain responsible for keeping it updated. The project does not state where its maintainers are located, so for a European organisation the governance of the project and its update practice are the points to assess.

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

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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 (self-host)
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 4, 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	self-hostVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	Browser
Type	Product
Website	basilisk-browser.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Basilisk

The European alternatives to Basilisk 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

18 European Browser 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 Basilisk

Basilisk 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.

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

Basilisk 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 Basilisk 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 Basilisk?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Basilisk include Ecosia Browser, Falkon and Iridium Browser. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Basilisk?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Basilisk include Falkon, Iridium Browser, Konqueror, LibreWolf, Midori, Mullvad Browser and Nyxt. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Basilisk is headquartered in US and hosts data in self-host. 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 4, 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

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

We found none of these signals on the vendor's own site when we checked.

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Browser

Browser: Web browser — browsing, privacy, extensions, sync. 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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