EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceVirtualisation & ContainersHeadquarters: NO

IncludeOS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

IncludeOS is a minimal unikernel operating system for C++ services. Instead of running on a general-purpose operating system, the operating system functionality is linked into the application at build time, so the application runs as a lean virtual machine. According to the project, applications start in tens of milliseconds and need only a few megabytes of disk and memory. It runs under full virtualisation on x86 hardware, with KVM, VirtualBox and VMware support. The project states that its public API is not yet stable.

IncludeOS is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence and is developed in public on GitHub, where commits continued in 2026; the website names Alfred Bratterud as maintainer. Wikipedia lists IncludeOS AS, a Norwegian company form, as developer. It is not a hosted service: you build the unikernel and run it on your own infrastructure or at a provider of your choice, so the location of data depends on where those virtual machines run.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with IncludeOS pre-selected
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Sovereignty score
94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EEA: the GDPR applies directly
  • 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 5, 2026
HeadquartersNO (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
CategoryVirtualisation & Containers
TypeProduct
Websiteincludeos.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to IncludeOS

The European alternatives to IncludeOS 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 Virtualisation & Containers 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 IncludeOS

IncludeOS is headquartered in NO, which falls under the GDPR through the European Economic Area. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

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

IncludeOS 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 IncludeOS 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 IncludeOS?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to IncludeOS include APPUiO (VSHN), Gardener and Giant Swarm. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to IncludeOS?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to IncludeOS include Gardener, Giant Swarm, Harvester, K3s, Kamaji, Kubermatic and Linbit DRBD/LINSTOR. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

IncludeOS is headquartered in NO (EFTA) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes IncludeOS 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 5, 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

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".

Report a vulnerability
includeos.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Security.html

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 Virtualisation & Containers

Virtualisation & Containers: Virtualisation platforms, container management, Kubernetes distributions and hypervisors. 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 IncludeOS — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score