EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorVPNHeadquarters: MY

hide.me: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

hide.me is a VPN service for individuals that encrypts internet traffic and routes it through the provider's servers. Native apps exist for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS, alongside Android TV, Fire TV and Apple TV support, browser extensions and router setups. It supports WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2/IPsec, and offers a kill switch, split tunnelling and multi-hop connections. It is delivered as a subscription, with a limited free plan.

hide.me is operated by eVenture Ltd, a company registered in Malaysia, so the operator sits outside EU and EEA jurisdiction even though the service offers servers in many countries, including European locations. According to its privacy policy, it keeps no connection logs, and the auditor DefenseCode has reviewed that claim. For a European organisation, choosing a server country determines where traffic exits, but the operator's legal jurisdiction remains Malaysian.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with hide.me pre-selected
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Sovereignty score
52 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (MY)
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-340
    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-630
    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 9, 2026
HeadquartersMY (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionNo — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Compliance documents1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signalDIGITALOCEAN-ASN - DigitalOcean, LLC, US (US)Technically measured
CategoryVPN
TypeProduct
Websitehide.me ↗

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 hide.me

The European alternatives to hide.me 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

20 European VPN 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 hide.me

hide.me is headquartered in MY, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so hide.me scores best on data residency.

hide.me 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 hide.me 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 hide.me?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to hide.me include AdGuard VPN, AirVPN and Avira Phantom VPN. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to hide.me?

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

Is hide.me GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

hide.me is headquartered in MY (OTHER) 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".

Security page / trust center
hide.me/privacy/

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

We found none of these signals on the vendor's own site when we checked.

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in VPN

VPN: Virtual private network — privacy protection, encrypted connection. 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 hide.me — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score