Non-EU vendorCloud Storage (Personal)Headquarters: US

iCloud: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

iCloud is Apple's personal cloud service for storing and syncing photos, files, notes, settings and backups across devices. It is built into iOS, iPadOS, macOS and other Apple operating systems, is available for Windows and has a limited web interface at iCloud.com. Components include iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, backups, email, passwords through Keychain and Find My. There is a free storage tier and a paid tier, iCloud+.

Apple is a US company, so US legislation such as the CLOUD Act can apply. According to Apple, Apple and third-party data centres may store and process data, and the keys are always held in Apple data centres. By default 15 categories are end-to-end encrypted; with the optional Advanced Data Protection that rises to 25. Mail, Contacts and Calendars are not end-to-end encrypted. iCloud is not open source and cannot be self-hosted.

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Sovereignty score

27 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (US, EU)
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 4, 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	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	US, EUVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	AKAMAI-AS - Akamai Technologies, Inc., US (NL)Technically measured
Category	Cloud Storage (Personal)
Type	Product
Website	icloud.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 iCloud

The European alternatives to iCloud 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

22 European Cloud Storage (Personal) 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 iCloud

iCloud 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.

iCloud hosts data in US, EU. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

iCloud 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 iCloud 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 iCloud?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to iCloud include Cozy Cloud, Filen and Internxt. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to iCloud?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to iCloud include Cozy Cloud, Filen, Internxt, Murena Workspace, Seafile (self-host) and Syncthing. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

iCloud is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, 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 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 Cloud Storage (Personal)

Cloud Storage (Personal): Personal cloud storage — sync and share files. 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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