EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceBPM & WorkflowHeadquarters: CH

Flowable: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Flowable is a platform for business process automation and case management based on the open standards BPMN, CMMN and DMN. The open-source engine is written in Java and can be embedded in a Java application or run as a standalone service, on a server, in a cluster or in the cloud. It integrates with Spring and offers Java and REST APIs. Flowable AG builds commercial products on top of it, including Flowable Work, Flowable Design, Flowable Control and an Enterprise Cloud, and targets processes in regulated industries.

The project started in 2016, when the lead developers of Activiti left Alfresco and forked it. The engine is licensed under Apache 2.0. Flowable AG is a Swiss company, which says on its website that it was founded in Switzerland, with offices including Zurich, Valencia, Stuttgart, Kraków, London, Atlanta and Toronto. Switzerland is a member of EFTA, not of the EU. If you host the open-source engine yourself, you decide where the data resides. The sources consulted do not state where the Enterprise Cloud is hosted.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Flowable pre-selected
Sovereignty score
94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
  • 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
HeadquartersCH (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalAMAZON-AES - Amazon.com, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryBPM & Workflow
TypeProduct
Websiteflowable.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 Flowable

The European alternatives to Flowable 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

22 European BPM & Workflow 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 Flowable

Flowable 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.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Flowable scores best on data residency.

Flowable 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 Flowable 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 Flowable?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Flowable include Albato, ARIS and Automatisch. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Flowable?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Flowable include Automatisch and Ofelia (Bonita). These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

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

Digital sovereignty in BPM & Workflow

BPM & Workflow: Business process management, workflow automation and process modelling. 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 Flowable — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score