EU-hosted, non-EU parentStorage & BackupHeadquarters: DE

Contabo: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Contabo is a cloud and hosting provider that directs its services at small businesses, developers and gamers. The company supplies hosting and cloud infrastructure as a vendor-hosted service from its own data centres. Its storage offering includes object storage and backup. According to Contabo's knowledge base, the object storage is based on Ceph and is not fully compatible with the AWS S3 API, so specific S3 features should be tested beforehand.

Contabo is headquartered in Munich, Germany. In 2022 the US investor KKR acquired a majority stake from Oakley Capital; Oakley, management and the founders retained minority stakes. A US majority owner is a CLOUD Act signal. According to 2022 reporting, Contabo operates data centres in Europe, the US and Asia. A European organisation that wants to keep data within the EU should therefore check which region is selected and how the ownership structure is assessed.

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

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Sovereignty score

59 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US, OTHER)
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-645
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 9, 2026

Headquarters	DE (EU)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent company	USVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EU, US, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	CLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	Storage & Backup
Type	Product
Website	contabo.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Contabo

The European alternatives to Contabo 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

32 European Storage & Backup 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 Contabo

Contabo is headquartered in DE and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data. The ultimate owner is based in US. Foreign control undermines part of the certainty a European headquarters offers.

Contabo hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Contabo 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 Contabo 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 Contabo?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Contabo include Acronis, Atempo and Bacula Systems. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Contabo?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Contabo include Bacula Systems, Bareos and BorgBackup. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Contabo is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. That makes Contabo 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 9, 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 Storage & Backup

Storage & Backup: Business storage, backup solutions, object storage and data recovery. 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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