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

FLOW-3D: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

FLOW-3D is a family of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation products from Flow Science. The solver is designed for, among other things, free-surface flows, phase change, cavitation and fluid-structure interaction. Variants exist for specific uses: FLOW-3D CAST for metal casting defects, FLOW-3D HYDRO for water infrastructure, FLOW-3D AM for additive manufacturing and FLOW-3D WELD for laser welding. According to the vendor, the software scales from standard workstations to clusters with hundreds of CPU cores.

Flow Science, Inc. is a New Mexico corporation headquartered in Santa Fe, United States. Since December 2021 it has been wholly owned by Dr. Flender Holding GmbH of Aachen, Germany, which also owns MAGMA and SIGMA; according to the acquisition announcement, Flow Science continues to operate as an independent company. The privacy policy refers to the GDPR and standard contractual clauses and states that personal data may be processed in the United States.

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Sovereignty score
55 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (US)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-380
    Closed source, but self-hostable: encryption keys and runtime under your own control
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-645
    Closed source, but self-hostable on your own infrastructure

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 13, 2026
Headquarters
US (US)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent company
DEVerified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Data hosting
Self-hosted, e.g. in US (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
CAD & Engineering
Type
Product
Website
flow3d.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to FLOW-3D

The European alternatives to FLOW-3D 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

88 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 FLOW-3D

FLOW-3D is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model. The ultimate owner is based in DE, also within Europe.

FLOW-3D runs on infrastructure you choose and control yourself. You decide where the data lives, including fully within the EU if you want — this is not a fixed hosting choice made by the vendor.

FLOW-3D is closed source, but you run the software yourself on your own infrastructure. The encryption keys and the runtime therefore stay under your own control, though you cannot audit or modify the source code. Ask about export options and open standards to limit software-level lock-in.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs FLOW-3D 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 FLOW-3D?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to FLOW-3D include ACCA software, ALLPLAN and AUCOTEC Engineering Base. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to FLOW-3D?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to FLOW-3D include Blender. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is FLOW-3D GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

FLOW-3D is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

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 13, 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

Timeline

Dated changes in who controls this vendor or where it is based, newest first. Every line links to the public sources.

  1. · AcquisitionVendor-stated

    Acquired by Dr. Flender Holding (Germany); the purchase of 100 percent of the shares was completed in December 2021.

All ownership changes

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.

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8 European alternatives to FLOW-3D — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score