EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignAIHeadquarters: CH

Companion: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Companion is a software-as-a-service for AI-based data automation, made for administrative teams in small and mid-sized organisations. It extracts data from e-mails, attachments, documents, web pages, images, audio and WhatsApp messages, structures it, lets users check and correct the result, and passes it to ERP, CRM or PIM systems. A chat assistant and an API are also offered. The vendor says it trains no models of its own and uses OpenAI's GPT-4o and Whisper through Microsoft Azure.

Companion is a brand of Vertical Data AG, headquartered in Bern, Switzerland. Switzerland is not in the EU but is an EFTA country with an EU adequacy decision. According to the vendor, all services are hosted in Switzerland, including the Azure-hosted models in Zürich, and customer data is not used to train models. Microsoft, a US company, is the cloud provider behind the language models, which is relevant for organisations concerned about US jurisdiction. Companion is delivered as SaaS only.

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Sovereignty score
67 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
  • Data residency SOV-380
    Hosting in Switzerland only (recognised by the EU as adequate)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
    Key management with a European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
    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 14, 2026
Headquarters
CH (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
CHVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
AI
Type
Product
Website
companion.ch ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Companion

The European alternatives to Companion come from our knowledge base of over 9,200 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

93 European AI 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 Companion

Companion 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.

Companion 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.

Companion 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 Companion 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 Companion?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Companion include Acapela Group, aiaibot and Aleph Alpha. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Companion?

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

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

Companion is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in CH. That makes Companion 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 AI

AI: Artificial intelligence — large language models, translation, generative AI. 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 Companion — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score