EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceGIS & GeospatialHeadquarters: IT

GRASS GIS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

GRASS GIS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is open-source software for geospatial processing. It handles raster, vector and imagery data in 2D and 3D and offers terrain and ecosystem modelling, hydrology, image processing, data management and a built-in temporal framework for time-series analysis. You can use it through a graphical interface, the command line and a Python API, and it works together with QGIS. GRASS runs on Windows, macOS and Linux and is also available via Docker and conda. You install and operate it yourself.

Development began in 1982 at the US Army laboratory USA-CERL; since version 5.0 (1999) it has been licensed under the GNU General Public License. Today it is maintained by an international development team and is a project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), fiscally sponsored by NumFOCUS. Because it is self-hosted, your organisation decides where data resides, and no vendor has access to your data. For support you can turn to the community or to commercial service providers.

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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 4, 2026
Headquarters
IT (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
LINK-OREGON - University of Oregon, US (US)Technically measured
Category
GIS & Geospatial
Type
Product
Website
grass.osgeo.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 GRASS GIS

The European alternatives to GRASS GIS 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

45 European GIS & Geospatial 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 GRASS GIS

GRASS GIS is headquartered in IT 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 GRASS GIS scores best on data residency.

GRASS GIS 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 GRASS GIS 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 GRASS GIS?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to GRASS GIS include 52°North, Airbus Defence & Space and Camptocamp. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to GRASS GIS?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to GRASS GIS include 52°North and Camptocamp. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is GRASS GIS GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

GRASS GIS is headquartered in IT (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes GRASS GIS 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 4, 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 GIS & Geospatial

GIS & Geospatial: Geographic information systems, map visualisation and spatial data analysis. 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 GRASS GIS — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score