Self-hosted / open sourceESG & SustainabilityHeadquarters: CH

Brightway: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Brightway is an open-source software package for life cycle assessment (LCA), written in Python. LCA evaluates the environmental impacts of a product or service across its supply chain. The framework is aimed at researchers, consultants and sustainability analysts who want to script their calculations and work with large inventory databases. Its modular design supports spatial and temporal LCA and global sensitivity analysis. It is installed and run on the user's own computer or server, not as a hosted service.

The framework is presented by the Swiss Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI). Its code is hosted on GitHub and maintained by a community of academic and industry users. The software is distributed under a BSD-style licence, so organisations can use and modify it internally without a vendor contract. Because it runs locally, inventory data does not have to pass through a vendor cloud. It is an open alternative to commercial LCA suites such as SimaPro, although it requires Python skills.

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

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Sovereignty score

94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
Data residency SOV-3100
Hosting in Switzerland only (recognised by the EU as adequate)
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 12, 2026

Headquarters	CH (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	CHVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	ESG & Sustainability
Type	Product
Website	docs.brightway.dev ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Brightway

The European alternatives to Brightway come from our knowledge base of over 7,800 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

53 European ESG & Sustainability 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 Brightway

Brightway is headquartered in Switzerland and falls under Swiss law, including the revised Swiss data protection act. Switzerland is not an EU member, but the European Commission recognises its level of data protection as adequate. Its Swiss headquarters does not by itself bring it under US legislation such as the CLOUD Act.

Brightway hosts data in Switzerland only. Switzerland is not part of the EU or the EEA, so the GDPR does not apply there directly; the European Commission does recognise Swiss data protection as adequate, so personal data can go there without extra safeguards. Our model therefore scores it between EU hosting and hosting outside Europe. If you require strictly EU hosting, take this into account.

Brightway 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 Brightway 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 Brightway?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Brightway include bluesign, Carbmee and Carbon Maps. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Brightway?

Our list of EU alternatives to Brightway is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

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

Brightway is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in CH. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Brightway 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 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 ESG & Sustainability

ESG & Sustainability: Carbon accounting, CSRD reporting, supply-chain due diligence (CSDDD/EUDR/CBAM) and ESG 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.

Also in this category

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