EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceWriting Assistance & GrammarHeadquarters: GB

Dasher: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Dasher is a program for entering text without a keyboard. Users steer through a zooming display of letters with a mouse, touch, joystick, head tracking or eye tracking, while a language model enlarges the most likely next letters. It is aimed at people who cannot use a keyboard, for example in augmentative communication, and supports many alphabets. Dasher is delivered as an app for Windows, macOS and Linux, with a v6 preview for Apple platforms, a web demo and a separate Android implementation.

Dasher is developed by the Dasher Project, a community project without a company behind it; its GitHub organisation lists the United Kingdom as its location, and Ace Centre formerly stewarded it. The software is open source: the project site names GPL-3.0, and the DasherCore engine uses the MIT licence. The app runs entirely on the user's own device; according to the privacy page, v6 currently sends no data to any server, and analytics will be opt-in only. Dasher v6 is funded through NLnet's NGI0 Commons Fund, supported by the EU's Next Generation Internet programme.

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Sovereignty score
77 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
  • 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-665
    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 16, 2026
Headquarters
GB (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Yes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Writing Assistance & Grammar
Type
Product
Website
dasher.at ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Dasher

The European alternatives to Dasher come from our knowledge base of over 9,500 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

26 European Writing Assistance & Grammar 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 Dasher

Dasher is headquartered in GB, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

Dasher hosts data outside the EU (OTHER). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

Dasher 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 Dasher 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 Dasher?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Dasher include CKEditor, Congree and contentbird. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Dasher?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Dasher include CKEditor, Geany, ghostwriter and Grammalecte. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Dasher is headquartered in GB (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. 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 16, 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 Writing Assistance & Grammar

Writing Assistance & Grammar: Grammar checking, spell checking, style advice and AI writing assistants. 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 Dasher — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score