EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceData Platform & WarehouseHeadquarters: US

dbt Core: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

dbt is a tool for transforming raw data in a data warehouse into trusted data products. You write business logic as SQL select statements, called models, and dbt turns them into tables and views, manages execution order, and runs tests and documentation alongside the code. dbt Core v2.0, the open-source release of the new engine written in Rust, is still in alpha and is released under the Apache License 2.0. You run it yourself from the command line; no Python runtime is needed.

dbt is developed by dbt Labs, which merged with Fivetran in June 2026 and operates together with it as a company; both are US companies. dbt Core itself does not store data: it runs on your own machine or CI environment and sends SQL to the warehouse you choose, so where data is stored is your decision, including in the EU. The dbt distribution also contains components under a separate dbt licence, and an optional hosted dbt platform service is available.

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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
    Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, 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-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 5, 2026
HeadquartersUS (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionOnly for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEU, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
CategoryData Platform & Warehouse
TypeProduct
Websitedocs.getdbt.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to dbt Core

The European alternatives to dbt Core 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

12 European Data Platform & Warehouse 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 dbt Core

dbt Core 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.

dbt Core hosts data in EU, 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.

dbt Core 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 dbt Core 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 dbt Core?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to dbt Core include DuckDB, Exasol and Falkor. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to dbt Core?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to dbt Core include DuckDB, Garage and MonetDB. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is dbt Core GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

dbt Core is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU, 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 5, 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 Data Platform & Warehouse

Data Platform & Warehouse: Lakehouses, cloud data warehouses, data-lake storage and analytical databases for enterprise-wide analysis. 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 dbt Core — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score