EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceNetwork & Firewall ManagementHeadquarters: DE

IPFire: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

IPFire is an open-source firewall platform based on Linux and Netfilter. It offers stateful packet inspection, network segmentation into zones such as LAN, DMZ and wireless, VPN over WireGuard, OpenVPN and IPsec, a web console with dashboards, and a Suricata-based intrusion prevention system with a domain blocklist. IPFire runs on commodity hardware and, according to the project site, is used by businesses and educational institutions of all sizes. Dedicated appliances and support services are sold through Lightning Wire Labs.

The IPFire project is located c/o Lightning Wire Labs GmbH in Datteln, Germany; its development team is international and backed by a community. IPFire is free software with openly available, auditable source code. Because you install and operate the firewall yourself, traffic and logs stay on your own infrastructure. For European organisations this is a self-hosted option that does not depend on a non-European cloud provider.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with IPFire pre-selected
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 September 20, 2026
HeadquartersDE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Compliance documents1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signalSSERV-AS - kyberio GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
CategoryNetwork & Firewall Management
TypeProduct
Websiteipfire.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 IPFire

The European alternatives to IPFire 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

41 European Network & Firewall Management 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 IPFire

IPFire 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 IPFire scores best on data residency.

IPFire 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 IPFire 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 IPFire?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to IPFire include Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Allegro Packets and Arelion. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to IPFire?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to IPFire include BIRD Internet Routing Daemon and Deciso OPNsense. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

IPFire is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes IPFire 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 September 20, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice when it was added on September 20, 2026. Source links have been recorded per record since 20 September 2026.

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)
ipfire.org/legal

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 22, 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".

Report a vulnerability
ipfire.org/docs/devel/security-policy
security.txt
ipfire.org/static/security.txt

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 Network & Firewall Management

Network & Firewall Management: Central management of firewalls, switches and Wi-Fi, network access control (NAC), load balancing and DNS/DHCP/IPAM. 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 IPFire — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score