EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceCMSHeadquarters: DE

Contao: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Contao is an open-source CMS for building professional websites and scalable web applications, built on the Symfony framework. Several websites can run in one installation. Contao also offers multilingual content, granular user permissions, SEO tools and accessibility aimed at BITV 2.0 and the German BFSG, including in the admin area. It can be extended through hooks, events and Symfony bundles. LTS versions come with four years of support. The Contao Manager, a browser-based tool, installs and manages Contao and its extensions. Contao runs on your own hosting.

Contao is licensed under the LGPL-3.0 and developed on GitHub. The Contao Association (Verein), a non-profit that focuses on Germany, Austria and Switzerland and originally existed as Contao Verein Schweiz, aims to promote Contao and fund its development. Because you host Contao yourself, you decide where the data resides and which jurisdiction applies, for example by choosing a European hosting provider.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Contao 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 2, 2026
HeadquartersDE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Compliance documents1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signalHETZNER-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
CategoryCMS
TypeProduct
Websitecontao.org ↗

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 Contao

The European alternatives to Contao come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 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

39 European CMS 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 Contao

Contao 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.

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

Contao 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 Contao 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 Contao?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Contao include Ametys, Bolt CMS and caisy. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Contao?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Contao include Ametys, Bolt CMS, Cockpit CMS, django CMS and Enonic XP. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Contao is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Contao 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 2, 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".

Security page / trust center
contao.org/en/security-advisories

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

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".

Report a vulnerability
github.com/contao/contao/security/policy
Supported versions
contao.org/en/release-plan

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in CMS

CMS: Content management systems — websites, headless CMS, digital experience platforms. 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.

Also in this category

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8 European alternatives to Contao — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score