EU sovereignCDN, DNS & DomainsHeadquarters: DE

deSEC: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

deSEC is a free DNS hosting service that signs the zones it hosts with DNSSEC. Registration requires only an email address. Zones are managed through a web interface or a REST API, and the service supports dynamic DNS, DANE records (TLSA and OPENPGPKEY) and integrations with tools such as dnscontrol, Terraform and acme.sh for automated certificate issuance. Queries are answered from two redundant networks with locations worldwide. It is delivered as a hosted service.

deSEC is run by a non-profit organisation based in Berlin, Germany, and relies on donations and sponsoring partners; the security consultancy SSE is named as a partner that helps fund the infrastructure. According to the operators, sensitive key material stays in Germany under European GDPR jurisdiction, and only public DNS data and signatures are published globally. The software, desec-stack, is open source under the MIT licence, so organisations can also run their own instance. For a European organisation, deSEC means DNS hosting by an EU non-profit, with the service levels of a donation-funded service.

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

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Sovereignty score

94 / 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-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-6100
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 2, 2026

Headquarters	DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	HETZNER-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
Category	CDN, DNS & Domains
Type	Product
Website	desec.io ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to deSEC

The European alternatives to deSEC 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 deSEC

deSEC 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 deSEC scores best on data residency.

deSEC 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 deSEC 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 deSEC?

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

Are there open-source alternatives to deSEC?

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

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

deSEC is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes deSEC 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 2, 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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