EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceCompliance & GRCHeadquarters: FR

CNIL PIA: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

The CNIL's PIA software helps data controllers carry out and document data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) under the GDPR. It guides you step by step through a method based on the CNIL's own guides and is available in several languages. You can use it as a desktop application for Windows, Linux and macOS, or install the web version, made up of a front end and a back end, on your own server.

The software is published by the CNIL, the French data protection authority, through its digital innovation lab LINC. The source code is on GitHub under the GPL-3.0 licence. According to the CNIL, a new version appears every four to six months. Because you run it locally or on your own infrastructure, your assessments and the information recorded in them stay within your organisation and are not sent to the maintainer. The CNIL offers it free of charge; there is no commercial publisher and no hosted cloud service.

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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 14, 2026
Headquarters
FR (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Compliance & GRC
Type
Product
Website
cnil.fr ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to CNIL PIA

The European alternatives to CNIL PIA come from our knowledge base of over 8,400 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

63 European Compliance & GRC 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 CNIL PIA

CNIL PIA is headquartered in FR 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 CNIL PIA scores best on data residency.

CNIL PIA 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 CNIL PIA 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 CNIL PIA?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to CNIL PIA include 2B Advice PrIME, Actecil and Adherent. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to CNIL PIA?

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

Is CNIL PIA GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

CNIL PIA is headquartered in FR (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes CNIL PIA 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 14, 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

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in Compliance & GRC

Compliance & GRC: Governance, risk management, compliance, privacy management and cookie consent. 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 CNIL PIA — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score