EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceGIS & GeospatialHeadquarters: US

ERDDAP: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

ERDDAP is a scientific data server that makes gridded and tabular datasets available through standard web requests. Users can download subsets of the data in common file formats and create graphs and maps from them. The software is a Java servlet that runs in a web application server, with Apache Tomcat recommended for production. It is meant for organisations that want to make scientific data available to others.

ERDDAP is developed by the Environmental Research Division of NOAA NMFS SWFSC, a US federal government agency. As a work of the US government, the software is dedicated to the public domain and released under CC0 1.0; this is not an OSI-approved licence, although the project calls itself free and open source. The NOAA and ERDDAP names are protected. You run ERDDAP on your own server, so your datasets stay under your control; NOAA also operates a public installation of its own.

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Sovereignty score
37 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (US)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
    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-615
    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 14, 2026
Headquarters
US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
USVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
GIS & Geospatial
Type
Product
Website
erddap.github.io ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to ERDDAP

The European alternatives to ERDDAP come from our knowledge base of over 8,400 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

75 European GIS & Geospatial 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 ERDDAP

ERDDAP is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

ERDDAP hosts data outside the EU (US). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

ERDDAP 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 ERDDAP 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 ERDDAP?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to ERDDAP include 3Dsurvey, 52°North and Airbus Defence & Space. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to ERDDAP?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to ERDDAP include 52°North, Camptocamp, Clearance and CloudCompare. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

ERDDAP is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. 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 14, 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

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in GIS & Geospatial

GIS & Geospatial: Geographic information systems, map visualisation and spatial data analysis. 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 ERDDAP — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score