EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceIoT & EmbeddedHeadquarters: DE

FHEM: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

FHEM is a free home automation server written in Perl. It is operated through web and smartphone frontends, telnet or TCP/IP. A large set of modules connects devices from many manufacturers, and the modules are maintained by numerous contributors who are credited in a maintainer file. The project website describes no cloud service. It does, however, ask users to run an fheminfo command so that the project knows which modules are in use.

FHEM is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2. Copyright is held by the original developer. The project is supported by FHEM e.V., a non-profit association in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, whose stated purpose includes promoting free and open source software, science, research and teaching. Because the server runs locally and is supported by a German association, it is a European option for organisations that want to keep home automation data under their own control. Security and updates remain the responsibility of the operator.

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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 12, 2026
Headquarters
DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
IoT & Embedded
Type
Product
Website
fhem.de ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to FHEM

The European alternatives to FHEM come from our knowledge base of over 8,000 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

90 European IoT & Embedded 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 FHEM

FHEM 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 FHEM scores best on data residency.

FHEM 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 FHEM 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 FHEM?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to FHEM include 1NCE, Actility ThingPark and akenza. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to FHEM?

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

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

FHEM is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes FHEM 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 12, 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 IoT & Embedded

IoT & Embedded: Internet of Things platforms, embedded systems and industrial IoT solutions. 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 FHEM — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score