Self-hosted / open sourceOffice & ProductivityHeadquarters: US

Etherpad: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Etherpad is an open-source editor for real-time collaboration on text documents. Every change is attributed to its author, authors get their own colour, and a timeslider lets you step through the full revision history. Plugins add functions such as comments, images, tables and various authentication methods. AI is available only as an optional plugin that you install yourself and can disable. Data can be exported in full. Etherpad is designed to be self-hosted on your own server, and many organisations also run public or managed instances.

The code is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. The project is coordinated by the Etherpad Foundation and maintained by a small team of volunteers; no commercial vendor stands behind the software itself. Anyone running Etherpad on their own servers in the EU keeps full control of the data. Third parties in Europe also offer managed Etherpad instances, for example Framasoft in France. In that case, check the hosting location and data-processing terms of the provider concerned.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Etherpad pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
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-675
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

Headquarters	US (US)	Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework	Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributed	Verified by hand
Data hosting	EU	Verified by hand
Open-source	Yes	Verified by hand
GDPR-compliant	Yes	Vendor-stated
Hosting signal	FASTLY - Fastly, Inc., US (US)	Technically measured
Category	Office & Productivity
Type	Product
Website	etherpad.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 Etherpad

The European alternatives to Etherpad 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

30 European Office & Productivity 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 Etherpad

Etherpad 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.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Etherpad scores best on data residency.

Etherpad 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 Etherpad 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 Etherpad?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Etherpad include Ashampoo Office, Calligra Suite and Craft Docs. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Etherpad?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Etherpad include Calligra Suite, CryptPad, EGroupware, Euro-Office, eXo Platform and Framasoft (Framapad/Framacalc). These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Etherpad is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU. 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 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 Office & Productivity

Office & Productivity: Office software, word processing, spreadsheets and groupware. 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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