EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceDatabase & Data ManagementHeadquarters: NL

DuckDB: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

DuckDB is an analytical SQL database system that runs inside your application's process, with no separate server. It works from edge devices to many-core servers, uses a SQL dialect inspired by PostgreSQL, and reads and writes CSV, JSON, Parquet and Iceberg, locally or in object storage. Clients exist for Python, Java, Node.js, Go, R and Rust, among others, and extensions add functions and file formats. Around DuckDB sit the Quack client-server protocol and the DuckLake lakehouse format.

DuckDB, DuckLake and Quack are MIT-licensed. The intellectual property and trademarks are held by the DuckDB Foundation, a non-profit foundation under Dutch law based in Amsterdam. The development team, DuckLabs (formerly DuckDB Labs), is also based in Amsterdam but joined Amazon Web Services at the end of August 2026; according to the announcement, the projects remain open source under the Foundation's stewardship. Because DuckDB runs in-process, your data stays wherever your application runs, including within the EU.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with DuckDB pre-selected
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
HeadquartersNL (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalCLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryDatabase & Data Management
TypeProduct
Websiteduckdb.org ↗

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 DuckDB

The European alternatives to DuckDB 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

13 European Database & Data Management 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 DuckDB

DuckDB 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 DuckDB scores best on data residency.

DuckDB 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 DuckDB 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 DuckDB?

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

Are there open-source alternatives to DuckDB?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to DuckDB include Elastic, Firebird SQL, MariaDB and Meilisearch. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

DuckDB is headquartered in NL (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes DuckDB 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 Database & Data Management

Database & Data Management: Database systems, data warehousing, managed database services and data platforms. 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 DuckDB — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score