EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignTranslation & LocalisationHeadquarters: BE

eTranslation: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

eTranslation is a neural machine translation service of the European Commission, trained on EU professional translation data. Users submit a text or a document and receive a translation in the language they select, with an EU formal style or a general style. It covers the 24 official EU languages plus several others, including Arabic, Chinese and Ukrainian. Besides the web interface, an API and a website translation plugin allow eligible organisations to connect it to their own systems and sites. It is an online service.

eTranslation is developed and maintained by the European Commission, an EU institution, so it has no commercial owner or foreign parent. It is free for eligible users, namely public administrations, small businesses including the self-employed, academia, non-governmental organisations, Digital Europe programme projects and candidates for EU posts, based in the EU or a country affiliated with the programme. The Commission states that data is processed under strict EU data protection rules and is never used to train commercial AI models. The service is not open source.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with eTranslation pre-selected
MastodonLinkedInBlueskyXEmail
Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • 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 5, 2026
Headquarters
BE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Translation & Localisation
Type
Product
Website
ec.europa.eu ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to eTranslation

The European alternatives to eTranslation 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

39 European Translation & Localisation vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is eTranslation one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with eTranslation

eTranslation is headquartered in BE and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

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

eTranslation 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 eTranslation 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 eTranslation?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to eTranslation include Acolad, Across Systems and Apertium. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to eTranslation?

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

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

eTranslation is headquartered in BE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes eTranslation 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 5, 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 Translation & Localisation

Translation & Localisation: Translation platforms, localisation management and multilingual content tools. 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

See all →
Open in the alternatives dashboardMissing a vendor? Submit itAre you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Translation & Localisation page — with no effect on your score
8 European alternatives to eTranslation — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score