EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorDevOpsHeadquarters: US

GitHub: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

GitHub is a developer platform that hosts Git repositories in the cloud and adds tools for the whole software lifecycle. It offers issues and milestones for planning, pull requests for code review, GitHub Actions for automated testing and deployment, package hosting, GitHub Pages for websites and AI-powered assistance through GitHub Copilot. Developers and organisations use it for private and public projects, including open-source collaboration. GitHub is delivered as a hosted service at GitHub.com; the platform itself is proprietary.

GitHub, Inc. is based in San Francisco and has been a subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018, which makes Microsoft a US parent company and a CLOUD Act signal. By default, data on GitHub.com is stored in the United States. Because the platform is proprietary and operated by the vendor, European organisations depend on GitHub and Microsoft for hosting, availability and access to their source code, and should weigh this when code is a strategic asset.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with GitHub pre-selected
MastodonLinkedInBlueskyXEmail
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, OTHER)
  • 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 8, 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, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Compliance documents3 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signalGITHUB - GitHub, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryDevOps
TypeProduct
Websitegithub.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 GitHub

The European alternatives to GitHub 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

38 European DevOps vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is GitHub one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with GitHub

GitHub 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.

GitHub hosts data in US, EU, OTHER. 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.

GitHub 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 GitHub 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 GitHub?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to GitHub include Codeberg, Forgejo and Gitea. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to GitHub?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to GitHub include Codeberg, Forgejo, Gitea, SourceHut, Woodpecker CI, PostgreSQL (self-host), Prometheus and Radicle. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

GitHub is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU, OTHER. 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 8, 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".

Data Processing Agreement (DPA)
docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-dpa-previews
Subprocessor list
docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-subprocessors
Security page / trust center
docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-privacy-statement

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

CSA STARConfirmed in registry

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in DevOps

DevOps: CI/CD, infrastructure as code, monitoring, container registries. 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

See all →
Open in the alternatives dashboardMissing a vendor? Submit itAre you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the DevOps page — with no effect on your score
8 European alternatives to GitHub — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score