EU Sovereignty Score
EU-hosted, non-EU parentCloud IaaSHeadquarters: CH

Exoscale: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Exoscale is a Swiss cloud provider offering virtual machines, GPU servers, managed Kubernetes (SKS), S3-compatible object storage, block storage, networking, DNS and a CDN. It also provides managed databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, OpenSearch, Valkey, Kafka and ClickHouse. The services are consumed as a hosted cloud and are intended for organisations that want to run workloads in European data centres.

Exoscale is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, and is part of A1 Digital and the A1 Group, an Austrian telecoms group. Its zones are located in countries including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Croatia, and according to Exoscale data is not transferred outside the country in which it was uploaded. Exoscale describes itself as a member of the Cloud Security Alliance and lists ISO 27001, GDPR, the Swiss FDPA and BSI C5 among its compliance frameworks. The platform itself is not presented as open source, although Exoscale offers managed open-source database engines.

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Sovereignty score
69 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
  • Data residency SOV-390
    Hosting in the EU and Switzerland
  • 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 9, 2026
HeadquartersCH (EU)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent companyMXVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingCH, EUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Compliance documents3 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signalexoscale - Akenes SA, CH (CH)Technically measured
CategoryCloud IaaS
TypeProduct
Websiteexoscale.com ↗

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 Exoscale

The European alternatives to Exoscale 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

84 European Cloud IaaS 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 Exoscale

Exoscale is headquartered in Switzerland and falls under Swiss law, including the revised Swiss data protection act. Switzerland is not an EU member, but the European Commission recognises its level of data protection as adequate. Its Swiss headquarters does not by itself bring it under US legislation such as the CLOUD Act. The ultimate owner is based in MX. Foreign control undermines part of the certainty a European headquarters offers.

Exoscale hosts data in the EU and in Switzerland. Switzerland is covered by a European Commission adequacy decision, so personal data can go there without extra safeguards. If you require strictly EU hosting, check the data processing agreement for which data is stored in Switzerland.

Exoscale 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 Exoscale 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 Exoscale?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Exoscale include 1984 Hosting, acens and Aiven. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Exoscale?

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

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

Exoscale is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in CH, EU. That makes Exoscale 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 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".

Data Processing Agreement (DPA)
exoscale.com/security
Subprocessor list
exoscale.com/privacy
EU hosting documented
exoscale.com/security

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Cloud IaaS

Cloud IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service — virtual machines, storage, networking. 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 Exoscale — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score