Self-hosted / open sourceVirtualisation & ContainersHeadquarters: IT

Capsule: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Capsule is an open-source multi-tenancy and policy framework for Kubernetes. It allows one cluster to be shared by several teams, groups or departments, with policies applied per tenant. The framework is declarative and suited to GitOps workflows. Capsule runs in the organisation's own Kubernetes clusters, so data and configuration remain under its control.

Capsule is licensed under Apache 2.0 and is a CNCF Sandbox project. The initiative comes from CLASTIX, the company behind Capsule, which is registered as CLASTIX SRL in Naples, Italy. The sponsoring company is therefore based in Italy, within the EU. Capsule itself is open-source software; CLASTIX separately offers a managed platform, kMetal. For a European organisation, Capsule is a building block of European origin. Its further development depends on the sponsoring company and on the governance model of the CNCF.

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

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Sovereignty score

94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
Data residency SOV-3100
EU-only hosting
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	IT (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	Virtualisation & Containers
Type	Product
Website	projectcapsule.dev ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Capsule

The European alternatives to Capsule 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

23 European Virtualisation & Containers 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 Capsule

Capsule 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.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Capsule scores best on data residency.

Capsule 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 Capsule 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 Capsule?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Capsule include APPUiO (VSHN), Gardener and Giant Swarm. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Capsule?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Capsule include Gardener, Giant Swarm, Harvester, IncludeOS, K3s, Kamaji and Kubermatic. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Capsule is headquartered in IT (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Capsule 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

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 12, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Virtualisation & Containers

Virtualisation & Containers: Virtualisation platforms, container management, Kubernetes distributions and hypervisors. 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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