EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorCompliance & GRCHeadquarters: US

Ethyca: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Ethyca is a data governance and privacy company. Its platform defines, evaluates and enforces data policies at the point where data is accessed, including for AI systems. The company describes its offer as runtime governance for AI. The platform builds on Fides, an open-source framework for expressing privacy rules in code, which Ethyca created and sponsors and which is published under the Apache 2.0 licence.

The company says it was founded in Ireland and operates as a US company with a base in New York. Its privacy policy states that personal data for its privacy solutions is kept on a server on the US east coast, and that transfers from the EEA rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. The policy does not name the GDPR or describe a data processing agreement. For a European organisation, data held by a US provider is subject to US legal access regimes, so location and contractual safeguards deserve review. Fides can run inside an organisation's own systems, offering one route to in-house control.

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Sovereignty score
17 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-30
    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 11, 2026
HeadquartersUS (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionOnly for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingUSVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantNoVendor-stated
CategoryCompliance & GRC
TypeProduct
Websiteethyca.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Ethyca

The European alternatives to Ethyca 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

43 European Compliance & GRC 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 Ethyca

Ethyca 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.

Ethyca 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.

Ethyca 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 Ethyca 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 Ethyca?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Ethyca include 2B Advice PrIME, Actecil and Adherent. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Ethyca?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Ethyca include CISO Assistant. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Ethyca is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 11, 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 Compliance & GRC

Compliance & GRC: Governance, risk management, compliance, privacy management and cookie consent. 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 Ethyca — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score