EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceAIHeadquarters: CN

DeepSeek: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

DeepSeek is an AI company offering large language models through a web chat, mobile app, desktop application and API. It also publishes model weights on Hugging Face: DeepSeek-V3.2 is released under the MIT licence, while the earlier DeepSeek-V3 weights fall under a separate model licence. The weights can be downloaded and run on a customer's own infrastructure.

The operating entity is Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., based in China, with no EU or US parent. Its privacy policy states that personal data collected through its services is stored in the People's Republic of China and may be shared with public authorities in limited legal cases; it names a representative for EU and UK data-subject requests. For a European organisation, the hosted chat or API therefore means data going to servers in China, while running the openly licensed weights on its own EU infrastructure keeps data under its own control. The hosted service is proprietary.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with DeepSeek pre-selected
Sovereignty score
77 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (CN)
  • 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 10, 2026
HeadquartersCN (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionNo — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingOTHERVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantNoVendor-stated
CategoryAI
TypeProduct
Websitedeepseek.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to DeepSeek

The European alternatives to DeepSeek 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

55 European AI 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 DeepSeek

DeepSeek is headquartered in CN, 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.

DeepSeek 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.

DeepSeek 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 DeepSeek 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 DeepSeek?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to DeepSeek include Aleph Alpha, Almato and Almawave. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to DeepSeek?

Our list of EU alternatives to DeepSeek is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

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

DeepSeek is headquartered in CN (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 10, 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 AI

AI: Artificial intelligence — large language models, translation, generative AI. 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 DeepSeek — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score