EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceCDN, DNS & DomainsHeadquarters: US

CoreDNS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

CoreDNS is a DNS server written in Go. It works as a chain of plugins, each performing one DNS function, for example serving zone files, rewriting queries, exposing Prometheus metrics, signing zones or resolving Kubernetes services. Administrators configure it in a Corefile and can compile a build that contains only the plugins they need. It integrates with Kubernetes for service discovery and with etcd, and has plugins for Azure DNS, Google Cloud DNS and Amazon Route 53. CoreDNS is software that you run yourself, on servers or in clusters; the project does not offer a hosted service.

CoreDNS is open source under the Apache License 2.0 and is a graduated project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, part of the Linux Foundation. Development takes place on GitHub. Because you operate it yourself, DNS data stays wherever you deploy it, including within the EU, and no vendor has access to your queries. This gives a European organisation control over hosting and updates, at the price of running and maintaining the service.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with CoreDNS pre-selected
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Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • 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-675
    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 4, 2026
Headquarters
US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
CDN, DNS & Domains
Type
Product
Website
coredns.io ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to CoreDNS

The European alternatives to CoreDNS 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

14 European CDN, DNS & Domains 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 CoreDNS

CoreDNS is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

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

CoreDNS 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 CoreDNS 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 CoreDNS?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to CoreDNS include Bunny.net, ClouDNS and deSEC. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to CoreDNS?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to CoreDNS include deSEC, Knot DNS and Knot Resolver. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

CoreDNS is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. 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 4, 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 CDN, DNS & Domains

CDN, DNS & Domains: Content delivery networks, DNS services and domain registration. 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 CoreDNS — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score