Non-EU vendorMaps & NavigationHeadquarters: US

Google Maps: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Google Maps is Google's mapping and navigation service. It offers satellite and aerial imagery, street maps, real-time traffic and route planning for walking, driving, cycling and public transport, as well as Street View, business listings, indoor maps and custom maps through My Maps. Google Maps is available on the web and as an app for Android and iOS. For developers and businesses there is Google Maps Platform: APIs and SDKs for maps, routes and places, such as geocoding, autocomplete and directions. Using them requires a Google Cloud account.

Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet, headquartered in Mountain View, California. The services run on Google's infrastructure and are not open source. Google notes that terms may differ for billing addresses in the EEA. The public pages consulted do not state in which regions data is stored. A European organisation that embeds the APIs in a website or app sends users' location data to a provider that is subject to US jurisdiction.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Google Maps pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

17 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-30
No hosting in Europe (US)
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

Headquarters	US (US)	Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework	Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)	Verified by hand
Data hosting	US	Verified by hand
Open-source	No	Verified by hand
GDPR-compliant	No	Vendor-stated
Hosting signal	GOOGLE - Google LLC, US (US)	Technically measured
Category	Maps & Navigation
Type	Product
Website	maps.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 Maps

The European alternatives to Google Maps 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

37 European Maps & Navigation 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 Maps

Google Maps 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 Maps hosts data outside the EU (US). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

Google Maps 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 Maps 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 Maps?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Google Maps include OsmAnd, HERE WeGo and Magic Earth. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Google Maps?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Google Maps include OsmAnd, Organic Maps, OpenStreetMap (self-host tiles), BRouter and GraphHopper. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Google Maps is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 Maps & Navigation

Maps & Navigation: Maps, route planning and navigation services. 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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