EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceIdentityHeadquarters: US

Keycloak: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Keycloak is open-source software for identity and access management. It handles user login so that applications do not have to store or authenticate users themselves. It supports single sign-on and single sign-out, the OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0 and SAML 2.0 protocols, social login and external identity providers, and user federation with LDAP and Active Directory. Administrators use an admin console, while users manage their own profile, password and two-factor authentication in an account console. You run Keycloak yourself, with support for clustering.

Keycloak has been a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) incubating project since April 2023. The source code is available under the Apache License 2.0. Red Hat, a US company, also offers a supported product based on the project (Red Hat build of Keycloak). Because you run the software on your own infrastructure, your own hosting choice determines where data resides; if you run Keycloak with a European provider or in your own data centre, control over identity data and keys stays with your organisation.

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Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US)
  • 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-675
    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 9, 2026
HeadquartersUS (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionOnly for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEU, USVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Compliance documents1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signalFASTLY - Fastly, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryIdentity
TypeProduct
Websitekeycloak.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 Keycloak

The European alternatives to Keycloak 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

58 European Identity 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 Keycloak

Keycloak 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.

Keycloak hosts data in EU, US. 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.

Keycloak 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 Keycloak 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 Keycloak?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Keycloak include Procivis, Evolveum midPoint and Hanko. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Keycloak?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Keycloak include Evolveum midPoint, Hanko, Kanidm, LemonLDAP::NG, NethServer, SimpleSAMLphp and Univention. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Keycloak is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU, US. 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".

Security page / trust center
keycloak.org/security

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 22, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Identity

Identity: Identity and access management — SSO, MFA, directory services. 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 Keycloak — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score