EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignESG & SustainabilityHeadquarters: CH

ecoinvent: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

ecoinvent is a life-cycle inventory (LCI) database of environmental data for environmental assessments, including life-cycle assessment (LCA). Organisations use the data to calculate the environmental impact of products and processes. Users work in the ecoQuery web platform or connect the data to their own applications through an API. Licences are offered for a single user, developers, education and enterprises.

ecoinvent is an independent, not-for-profit association based in Zurich, founded by ETH Zurich, EPFL, Empa, Agroscope and the Paul Scherrer Institute. As an association it has no commercial owner above it. The database is licensed rather than open source. The public pages do not state where the platform or the data is hosted, so a European organisation should ask for the hosting location, the processing terms and the licence conditions during procurement.

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Sovereignty score
67 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
  • Data residency SOV-380
    Hosting in Switzerland only (recognised by the EU as adequate)
  • 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 10, 2026
HeadquartersCH (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingCHVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantNoVendor-stated
CategoryESG & Sustainability
TypeProduct
Websiteecoinvent.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to ecoinvent

The European alternatives to ecoinvent 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

40 European ESG & Sustainability 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 ecoinvent

ecoinvent is headquartered in Switzerland and falls under Swiss law, including the revised Swiss data protection act. Switzerland is not an EU member, but the European Commission recognises its level of data protection as adequate. Its Swiss headquarters does not by itself bring it under US legislation such as the CLOUD Act.

ecoinvent hosts data in Switzerland only. Switzerland is not part of the EU or the EEA, so the GDPR does not apply there directly; the European Commission does recognise Swiss data protection as adequate, so personal data can go there without extra safeguards. Our model therefore scores it between EU hosting and hosting outside Europe. If you require strictly EU hosting, take this into account.

ecoinvent 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 ecoinvent 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 ecoinvent?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to ecoinvent include bluesign, Carbmee and Carbonfact. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to ecoinvent?

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

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

ecoinvent is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in CH. That makes ecoinvent 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 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 ESG & Sustainability

ESG & Sustainability: Carbon accounting, CSRD reporting, supply-chain due diligence (CSDDD/EUDR/CBAM) and ESG data management. 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 ecoinvent — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score