Self-hosted / open sourceRemote Desktop & SupportHeadquarters: US

Apache Guacamole: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Apache Guacamole is a clientless remote desktop gateway. It gives users access to remote computers and virtual machines from a web browser, using the standard protocols VNC, RDP and SSH, so no plugin or client software is needed. It has two main parts: a web application that handles the interface, authentication and authorisation, and guacd, a backend service that translates the native protocols into the Guacamole protocol. Target machines can stay isolated behind the gateway and need not be reachable from the internet. Guacamole is software you install and run yourself.

Guacamole is open source under the Apache License 2.0 and has been a top-level project of the Apache Software Foundation since 2017. The foundation is a nonprofit in the United States, run almost entirely by volunteers; commercial support is offered by third-party companies. Because you host it yourself, your organisation decides where the gateway and its session traffic reside, including within the EU.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Apache Guacamole pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
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-675
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 9, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified 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	FASTLY - Fastly, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	Remote Desktop & Support
Type	Product
Website	guacamole.apache.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 Apache Guacamole

The European alternatives to Apache Guacamole 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

18 European Remote Desktop & Support 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 Apache Guacamole

Apache Guacamole 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.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Apache Guacamole scores best on data residency.

Apache Guacamole 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 Apache Guacamole 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 Apache Guacamole?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Apache Guacamole include AnyDesk, DWService and FastViewer. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Apache Guacamole?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Apache Guacamole include DWService. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Apache Guacamole GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Apache Guacamole is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU. 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 9, 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 Remote Desktop & Support

Remote Desktop & Support: Remote access, remote support and screen sharing. 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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