Self-hosted / open sourceIoT & EmbeddedHeadquarters: CN

EMQX: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

EMQX is an MQTT broker and data platform for IoT, industrial IoT, AI and connected vehicles. It supports MQTT 5.0, 3.1.1 and 3.1 and, through gateways, MQTT-SN, CoAP, LwM2M and MQTT over QUIC. You operate EMQX yourself, as a Docker container, on Kubernetes with the EMQX Operator or from installation packages, or take it as a managed service, EMQX Cloud. The company behind it is called EMQ.

Since version 5.9.0, EMQX is released under the Business Source License 1.1. This is source-available rather than open source as defined by the Open Source Initiative. Production use on a single node is permitted; a cluster, or offering it as a service to third parties, requires a commercial licence or an EMQX Cloud plan. Each version converts to Apache 2.0 four years after release; earlier versions remain under Apache 2.0. EMQ lists offices in the United States, Germany, Sweden (research and development) and China; the regions of EMQX Cloud have not been established. Hosting it yourself gives you full control over where your data resides.

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Sovereignty score

52 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (CN)
Data residency SOV-3100
Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, OTHER)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-340
Key management with a non-European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-630
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 9, 2026

Headquarters	CN (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	No — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	EU, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	IoT & Embedded
Type	Product
Website	emqx.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to EMQX

The European alternatives to EMQX 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

62 European IoT & Embedded 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 EMQX

EMQX 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.

EMQX hosts data in EU, OTHER. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

EMQX 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 EMQX 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 EMQX?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to EMQX include 1NCE, Actility ThingPark and akenza. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to EMQX?

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

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

EMQX is headquartered in CN (OTHER) and hosts data in EU, OTHER. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. 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 9, 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 IoT & Embedded

IoT & Embedded: Internet of Things platforms, embedded systems and industrial IoT solutions. 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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