EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignNotes & TasksHeadquarters: IT

Bear: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Bear is a Markdown note-taking app from Shiny Frog for Mac, iPhone and iPad. A note can combine text, photos, tables and to-do lists, and notes are organised with flexible tags and foldable headings. Sketches can be inserted inline, and notes export to formats such as PDF, HTML and DOCX; some exports and OCR search of text in photos and PDFs require the Pro subscription. Bear is a native app that stores notes in a SQLite database on the device.

Bear is made by Shiny Frog Ltd, and its terms of service are governed by Italian law. Syncing between devices is a Pro feature that uses Apple's iCloud. According to the vendor, notes stay between the user and iCloud, and Apple's Advanced Data Protection is supported. Where synced notes are stored therefore depends on the user's iCloud account and Apple's infrastructure, not on servers run by Shiny Frog. Bear is proprietary software without a self-hosting option, so a European organisation should assess iCloud as the underlying storage provider before syncing sensitive material.

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Sovereignty score
59 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-350
    Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
    Key management with a European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-645
    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 1, 2026
Headquarters
IT (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
EU, USVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents
1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal
AKAMAI-LINODE-AP - Akamai Connected Cloud, SG (NL)Technically measured
Category
Notes & Tasks
Type
Product
Website
bear.app ↗

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 Bear

The European alternatives to Bear 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

25 European Notes & Tasks 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 Bear

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

Bear hosts data in EU, US. 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.

Bear 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 Bear 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 Bear?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Bear include Anytype, Capacities and Carnet. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Bear?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Bear include Carnet, CryptPad, HedgeDoc and Joplin. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Bear is headquartered in IT (EU) and hosts data in EU, US. That makes Bear 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".

Security page / trust center
bear.app/terms

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Notes & Tasks

Notes & Tasks: Note-taking apps and task management — write, organise, 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.

Also in this category

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8 European alternatives to Bear — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score