EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorCloud IaaSHeadquarters: US

Google Cloud Platform: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Google Cloud Platform, now branded Google Cloud, is Google's cloud computing suite, launched in 2008 with App Engine. It offers modular services for compute, storage and databases, networking, big data, machine learning and AI, identity and security, and management tools. Products include Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery and Cloud Run. Resources are deployed in regions made up of zones, each zone being a failure domain within a physical data centre. It is a public cloud service operated by Google and is not open source.

Google is a US company, so Google Cloud is subject to US law, including the CLOUD Act, regardless of the region chosen. Google operates regions in several parts of the world, including Europe, and some services offer multi-regional locations. Google states that data locality is governed by the terms of service, including service-specific terms. European organisations should therefore check per service where data is stored and processed, and which contractual terms apply, rather than assuming that a European region alone is sufficient.

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Sovereignty score
27 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-350
    Hosting inside and outside Europe (US, EU, APAC)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
    Key management with a non-European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-615
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

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
HeadquartersUS (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionOnly for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingUS, EU, APACVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalGOOGLE - Google LLC, US (US)Technically measured
CategoryCloud IaaS
TypeProduct
Websitecloud.google.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 Google Cloud Platform

The European alternatives to Google Cloud Platform 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

84 European Cloud IaaS 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 Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Platform 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.

Google Cloud Platform hosts data in US, EU, APAC. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Google Cloud Platform is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Google Cloud Platform 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 Google Cloud Platform?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Google Cloud Platform include OVHcloud, Scaleway and Hetzner. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Google Cloud Platform?

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

Is Google Cloud Platform GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Google Cloud Platform is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU, APAC. 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 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 Cloud IaaS

Cloud IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service — virtual machines, storage, networking. 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 Google Cloud Platform — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score