Self-hosted / open sourceAIHeadquarters: SG

Jan: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Jan is a desktop application for running AI language models on your own computer, as an open alternative to an online chat assistant. Users download open models and hold conversations without an internet connection; they can also connect external model providers such as OpenAI or Anthropic with their own API key. Jan is installed as an app and does not depend on a service from its maker.

Jan is made by Menlo Research Pte. Ltd. The legal form points to Singapore, but the website names no headquarters, and the company has offices in the United States, Singapore and Vietnam, among others. The code is on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 licence. According to the privacy policy, conversations and usage logs stay on the user's own device; with an external model provider, the data goes to that provider and its terms apply. The policy does not mention the GDPR. For a European organisation, local use keeps the data under its own control, while choosing an external model provider brings in that provider's jurisdiction.

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Sovereignty score

77 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (SG)
Data residency SOV-3100
No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
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-665
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 10, 2026

Headquarters	SG (OTHER)	Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	No — no adequacy decision	Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributed	Verified by hand
Data hosting	OTHER	Verified by hand
Open-source	Yes	Verified by hand
GDPR-compliant	No	Vendor-stated
Category	AI
Type	Product
Website	jan.ai ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Jan

The European alternatives to Jan 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

55 European AI 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 Jan

Jan is headquartered in SG, 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.

Jan hosts data outside the EU (OTHER). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

Jan 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 Jan 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 Jan?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Jan include llama.cpp, Mistral AI and Langdock. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Jan?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Jan include llama.cpp and Mistral AI. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Jan is headquartered in SG (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 10, 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 AI

AI: Artificial intelligence — large language models, translation, generative AI. 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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