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

FreeCAD: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

FreeCAD is a free, open source parametric 3D modeller for designing real-world objects of any size. Designs change by editing parameters in the model history, and geometrically constrained 2D sketches are used to build 3D objects and extract production drawings. Add-on workbenches cover finite element analysis, experimental CFD, BIM, geodata, CAM/CNC and robot simulation. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux and reads and writes open formats including STEP, IGES, STL, DXF and IFC. Students, programmers and professionals use it for product design, mechanical engineering, architecture and 3D printing.

FreeCAD is released under the LGPL, with no licence fees, sign-up or paywall. It was started by Jürgen Riegel, Werner Mayer and Yorik van Havre and is developed by a community. The FreeCAD Project Association, an international non-profit registered as an AISBL in Belgium, owns the trademark and collects donations. Because the software runs on your own systems, no vendor receives your design data.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with FreeCAD pre-selected
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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 2, 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
YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal
DIGITALOCEAN-ASN - DigitalOcean, LLC, US (US)Technically measured
Category
CAD & Engineering
Type
Product
Website
freecad.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 FreeCAD

The European alternatives to FreeCAD come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 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

68 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 FreeCAD

FreeCAD 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 FreeCAD scores best on data residency.

FreeCAD 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 FreeCAD 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 FreeCAD?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to FreeCAD 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 FreeCAD?

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

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

FreeCAD is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes FreeCAD 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 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 FreeCAD — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score