EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceMessagingHeadquarters: DE

Kaidan: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Kaidan is a chat application that uses the open XMPP (Jabber) protocol. It supports end-to-end encryption, audio and video messages and file sharing; since version 0.15, audio and video calls are also possible. Users choose their own XMPP server and are not tied to a single provider. Kaidan is distributed as source code and as a Flatpak through Flathub. The current stable version, 0.16.0, was released in July 2026.

Kaidan is a KDE project. Its source code is hosted on invent.kde.org, and the non-profit association KDE e.V., with its postal address in Berlin, Germany, represents the community in legal and financial matters. According to the LICENSES directory of the repository, the code is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later. Because Kaidan is client software, the storage location of messages depends on the XMPP server that is chosen, and the project runs no hosted service of its own. For a European organisation this is a free-software client from a German community that can be combined with a self-hosted or European XMPP server.

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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 October 12, 2026
Headquarters
DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
Messaging
Type
Product
Website
kaidan.im ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Kaidan

The European alternatives to Kaidan come from our knowledge base of over 8,000 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

29 European Messaging 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 Kaidan

Kaidan 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 Kaidan scores best on data residency.

Kaidan 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 Kaidan 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 Kaidan?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Kaidan include 360dialog, Balsio and Berty. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Kaidan?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Kaidan include Berty, Conversations (XMPP), Delta Chat and Dino. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Kaidan is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Kaidan 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 12, 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 Messaging

Messaging: Personal messaging — chat, group conversations, media sharing. 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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8 European alternatives to Kaidan — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score