EU sovereignNetwork & Firewall ManagementHeadquarters: DE

DE-CIX: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

DE-CIX is an internet exchange operator headquartered in Cologne, Germany. It runs carrier- and data-centre-neutral exchanges in several countries, including Frankfurt. Its services cover peering between networks, direct connections to cloud providers, data-centre services and security features such as AS112, blackholing and MACsec. Customers are network operators, enterprises and data-centre operators that connect to DE-CIX's infrastructure rather than running an exchange themselves.

The operating company is DE-CIX Management GmbH, with its registered seat in Cologne. The company's imprint names no shareholders, and no foreign parent company is shown. The privacy policy states that personal data is generally processed in Germany and other European countries. In exceptional cases processing takes place outside the EU, for example for web analytics and content delivery services provided by US companies. For a European organisation, DE-CIX is a European operator; the point to check is which service providers process portal and billing data.

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

Mastodon LinkedIn Bluesky X Email

Sovereignty score

71 / 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-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-655
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 11, 2026

Headquarters	DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	Network & Firewall Management
Type	Product
Website	de-cix.net ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to DE-CIX

The European alternatives to DE-CIX 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

41 European Network & Firewall Management vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is DE-CIX one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with DE-CIX

DE-CIX 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 DE-CIX scores best on data residency.

DE-CIX 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 DE-CIX 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 DE-CIX?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to DE-CIX include Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Allegro Packets and Arelion. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to DE-CIX?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to DE-CIX include BIRD Internet Routing Daemon and Deciso OPNsense. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is DE-CIX GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

DE-CIX is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes DE-CIX 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 11, 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

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".

security.txt: de-cix.net/.well-known/security.txt

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

Checked on October 11, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Network & Firewall Management

Network & Firewall Management: Central management of firewalls, switches and Wi-Fi, network access control (NAC), load balancing and DNS/DHCP/IPAM. 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

See all →

Open in the alternatives dashboard Missing a vendor? Submit it Are you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Network & Firewall Management page — with no effect on your score