EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorWhiteboarding & Visual CollaborationHeadquarters: JP

Cacoo: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Cacoo is an online diagramming and brainstorming tool from Nulab, a Japanese software company. Teams use it to draw diagrams and develop ideas together on a shared canvas in the browser. The product connects with services such as Confluence, Slack, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Visio. Enterprise customers can use SAML single sign-on and user provisioning. Cacoo is delivered as a web service, and the vendor states that it can also be hosted on a private server.

Nulab, Inc. is headquartered in Fukuoka, Japan. Japan is outside the EU and EEA. Nulab's privacy policy has an EEA and UK appendix and refers to a separate data processing addendum with standard contractual clauses for transfers. The policy does not name the region where Cacoo customer data is stored, so a European organisation should ask Nulab for this in writing. The private-server option gives an organisation direct control over where its diagrams are hosted.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Cacoo pre-selected
MastodonLinkedInBlueskyXEmail
Sovereignty score
32 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (JP)
  • Data residency SOV-30
    No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-340
    Key management with a non-European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-630
    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 11, 2026
HeadquartersJP (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionYes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingOTHERVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
CategoryWhiteboarding & Visual Collaboration
TypeProduct
Websitenulab.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Cacoo

The European alternatives to Cacoo 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

11 European Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is Cacoo one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with Cacoo

Cacoo is headquartered in JP, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

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

Cacoo 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 Cacoo 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 Cacoo?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Cacoo include Collaboard, Conceptboard and Explain Everything. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Cacoo?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Cacoo include Nextcloud Whiteboard. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Cacoo is headquartered in JP (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. 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 11, 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 Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration

Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration: Infinite-canvas whiteboards for brainstorming, workshops and visual planning. 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

See all →
Open in the alternatives dashboardMissing a vendor? Submit itAre you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration page — with no effect on your score
8 European alternatives to Cacoo — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score