EU sovereignIdentityHeadquarters: DE

Hanko: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Hanko is an open-source authentication and user management platform for web and mobile applications, with passkeys as a core feature. Hanko Auth provides user management, single sign-on, social logins and passkey sign-in or passkey-based multifactor authentication, with prebuilt web components (Hanko Elements) and a Flow API. A separate Passkey API adds passkey infrastructure to an existing authentication stack, and an Authenticator App offers white-label biometric and push authentication. Hanko positions it as an alternative to services such as Auth0, Firebase Auth and Keycloak.

Hanko GmbH is a German company based in Kiel. The backend is licensed under AGPL-3.0, while the web components and frontend SDK use the MIT licence, and commercial licensing is available on request. Organisations can use the managed Hanko Cloud, a private cloud environment on a provider of their choice, or self-host the software. The vendor offers EU hosting and describes its service as made and hosted in Europe. No non-European parent company is named, so a self-hosted deployment gives full control over data location.

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

Mastodon LinkedIn Bluesky X Email

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	DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents	1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal	CLOUDFLARESPECTRUM - Cloudflare London, LLC, US (US)Technically measured
Category	Identity
Type	Product
Website	hanko.io ↗

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 Hanko

The European alternatives to Hanko 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

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

Is Hanko 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 Hanko

Hanko is headquartered in DE 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 Hanko scores best on data residency.

Hanko 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 Hanko 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 Hanko?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Hanko include Adnovum, Airlock and Auðkenni. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Hanko?

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

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

Hanko is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Hanko 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".

Data Processing Agreement (DPA): hanko.io/dpa

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Identity

Identity: Identity and access management — SSO, MFA, directory 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.

Also in this category

See all →

Open in the alternatives dashboard Missing a vendor? Submit it Are you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Identity page — with no effect on your score