EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceWhiteboarding & Visual CollaborationHeadquarters: DE

Freeplane: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Freeplane is a free open-source application for mind mapping, knowledge management and project work. Users build hierarchical maps of ideas, notes and tasks on their desktop, for example to structure a project, explore a topic or organise research. It is written in Java with a Swing interface and is installed as an application on your own computer; no separate cloud service is needed. The documentation is published online and, like the source code, maintained on GitHub.

Freeplane is developed by the Freeplane team, a community without a legal entity of its own. The project moved from SourceForge to GitHub on 30 November 2024. The public profile of its lead developer lists Germany as the location. The licence is GPL-2.0, so you can inspect, modify and run the source code yourself. Because the program works locally, your maps and files stay on your own system and the developers do not process any data.

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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 14, 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
Category
Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration
Type
Product
Website
docs.freeplane.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Freeplane

The European alternatives to Freeplane come from our knowledge base of over 8,400 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

21 European Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration 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 Freeplane

Freeplane 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 Freeplane scores best on data residency.

Freeplane 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 Freeplane 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 Freeplane?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Freeplane include Beekast, Classroomscreen and Collaboard. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Freeplane?

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

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

Freeplane is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Freeplane 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 14, 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

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration

Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration: Infinite-canvas whiteboards for brainstorming, workshops and visual planning. 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 Freeplane — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score