EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorSearch EnginesHeadquarters: US

Kagi: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Kagi is a paid, ad-free search engine funded by subscriptions. It is a metasearch engine: results from other search engines are combined with its own indexes, and users can rank, pin or block sites and filter searches with lenses. Kagi also offers an AI assistant, a translation service, a news service and the Orion browser. According to the vendor, searches are not tied to user profiles and no tracking takes place. Kagi is delivered through the web.

Kagi Inc. is a US company: it was founded in Palo Alto in 2018 and, according to its own privacy policy, is a Delaware public benefit corporation. It is therefore subject to US law, including the CLOUD Act. Its infrastructure is global and users are routed to the nearest node; the listed locations include three in the United States, London and the Netherlands, plus Hong Kong, Singapore, São Paulo and Sydney. A search from a European user can therefore be processed outside the EU. Kagi is not open source.

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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, OTHER)
  • 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 9, 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, EU, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Search Engines
Type
Product
Website
kagi.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Kagi

The European alternatives to Kagi 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

15 European Search Engines 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 Kagi

Kagi 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.

Kagi hosts data in US, EU, OTHER. 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.

Kagi 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 Kagi 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 Kagi?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Kagi include Ecosia, Lilo and MetaGer. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Kagi?

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

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

Kagi is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU, OTHER. 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".

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 Search Engines

Search Engines: Search engines — privacy-friendly web searching. 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 Kagi — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score