EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceCDN, DNS & DomainsHeadquarters: NL

dnsdist: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

dnsdist is an open-source DNS load balancer and firewall that sits in front of DNS servers. It distributes queries across backends, and its rules detect traffic that looks like denial-of-service attacks or abuse, then shunt or block it. The customer installs and operates it on its own infrastructure. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 and is part of the PowerDNS source repository. It is an alternative to proprietary DNS traffic-management appliances.

dnsdist is maintained by PowerDNS.COM B.V., a company registered in The Hague, Netherlands. Because the company is established in the EU and the software runs on the operator's own servers, query data stays under the customer's control and within European jurisdiction. The project continues to publish releases, with several in 2026. Commercial help and support are available from the company on request, separately from the free software.

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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 12, 2026
Headquarters
NL (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
CDN, DNS & Domains
Type
Product
Website
dnsdist.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to dnsdist

The European alternatives to dnsdist come from our knowledge base of over 8,000 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

19 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 dnsdist

dnsdist is headquartered in NL 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 dnsdist scores best on data residency.

dnsdist 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 dnsdist 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 dnsdist?

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

Are there open-source alternatives to dnsdist?

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

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

dnsdist is headquartered in NL (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes dnsdist 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 12, 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.

Also in this category

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8 European alternatives to dnsdist — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score