EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceBrowserHeadquarters: DE

Falkon: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Falkon is a free web browser developed by the KDE community and written in C++ with Qt. It began in 2010 as QupZilla and became a KDE project in 2017. It renders pages with QtWebEngine, which wraps the Chromium browser core. An ad blocker and a password manager are enabled by default, and Falkon supports themes, extensions from a store and GreaseMonkey scripts. It integrates with the KDE Plasma desktop and runs on Unix-like systems, Haiku and Windows.

Falkon is open source under the GPL-3.0-or-later licence, so its code can be inspected, modified and redistributed. It has no commercial owner: KDE is represented legally by KDE e.V., a non-profit association based in Berlin, Germany. The browser runs locally on the device and is not a hosted service. For European organisations Falkon is an option when a community-governed, auditable desktop browser is preferred over a product from a single vendor.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Falkon pre-selected
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 2, 2026
HeadquartersDE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalHETZNER-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
CategoryBrowser
TypeProduct
Websitefalkon.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 Falkon

The European alternatives to Falkon 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

18 European Browser 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 Falkon

Falkon is headquartered in DE 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 Falkon scores best on data residency.

Falkon 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 Falkon 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 Falkon?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Falkon include Ecosia Browser, Iridium Browser and Konqueror. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Falkon?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Falkon include Iridium Browser, Konqueror, LibreWolf, Midori, Mullvad Browser and Nyxt. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Falkon is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Falkon 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 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

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

Report a vulnerability
kde.org/info/security/
security.txt
kde.org/.well-known/security.txt
Organisation behind the open-source project
KDE

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Browser

Browser: Web browser — browsing, privacy, extensions, sync. 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 Falkon — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score