EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceIdentityHeadquarters: GB

Cerbos: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Cerbos is an authorization service that separates access rules from application code. Policies are written in human-readable YAML and managed centrally, and stateless Policy Decision Points, deployed alongside the services that use them, enforce those rules at runtime. The core decision engine, Cerbos PDP, is released under the Apache 2.0 licence. Cerbos Hub is a commercial management control plane. Cerbos can be self-hosted in cloud, on-premises or air-gapped environments.

The company behind Cerbos is Zenauth Ltd, a UK company with a London address, and the website applies the law of England and Wales. The website names no parent company or majority shareholder. Because the PDP runs inside the customer's own infrastructure, authorization decisions and policy data can stay within the organisation's environment. The paid Hub control plane is a separate offering, and its hosting location is not stated on the website. The United Kingdom is outside the EU and EEA, which matters for any data the vendor processes.

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Sovereignty score
77 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
  • 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 11, 2026
Headquarters
GB (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Yes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
Identity
Type
Product
Website
cerbos.dev ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Cerbos

The European alternatives to Cerbos 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

58 European Identity 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 Cerbos

Cerbos is headquartered in GB, 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.

Cerbos 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.

Cerbos 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 Cerbos 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 Cerbos?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Cerbos include Adnovum, Airlock and Auðkenni. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Cerbos?

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

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

Cerbos is headquartered in GB (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 Identity

Identity: Identity and access management — SSO, MFA, directory services. 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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8 European alternatives to Cerbos — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score