EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceCAD & EngineeringHeadquarters: FR

F3D: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

F3D is a fast, minimalist desktop 3D viewer. It opens many file formats, from glTF, USD, STL and STEP to scientific datasets, plays animations, generates thumbnails and offers options for realistic rendering. F3D can be fully controlled from the command line and through configuration files, integrates with file managers and includes libf3d, a library with C++ and Python bindings, among others. It is aimed at designers, engineers and researchers who want to inspect models quickly without launching a full CAD package. It is installed as a desktop program for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android.

F3D is maintained by the non-profit F3D-APP Foundation, which describes itself in a FOSDEM 2026 talk as a French non-profit; the project was originally created by Kitware SAS. The software is open source under the BSD 3-Clause licence and runs locally, so your models stay on your own device. Development was co-funded through NLnet and the EU's NGI Zero programme.

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Sovereignty score
94 / 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-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-6100
    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 16, 2026
Headquarters
FR (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
CAD & Engineering
Type
Product
Website
f3d.app ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to F3D

The European alternatives to F3D come from our knowledge base of over 9,500 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

106 European CAD & Engineering 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 F3D

F3D is headquartered in FR 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 F3D scores best on data residency.

F3D 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 F3D 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 F3D?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to F3D include ACCA software, ALLPLAN and ambiente. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to F3D?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to F3D include Bforartists and Blender. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is F3D GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

F3D is headquartered in FR (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes F3D 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 16, 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 CAD & Engineering

CAD & Engineering: Computer-aided design, 3D modelling and engineering simulation software. 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 F3D — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score