EU sovereignCloud IaaSHeadquarters: NL

Leafcloud: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Leafcloud is a public cloud provider from Amsterdam with a platform built on OpenStack. The offering consists of virtual machines, Nvidia GPUs for AI and rendering, self-managed Kubernetes, managed Kubernetes (based on Gardener), networking, block storage and S3-compatible object storage; managed databases are planned for 2026. You use the services yourself through a console and API. What sets it apart is where the servers sit: in apartment complexes and care homes, where the waste heat is used, for example for hot water.

Leafcloud is based in Amsterdam and says its servers are housed in the Netherlands, in line with European privacy rules. The company lists ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certifications and publishes material on the US CLOUD Act and European sovereignty. Because the platform rests on open-source technology, moving to or from other OpenStack environments is easier than with closed platforms. Leafcloud explicitly presents itself as an alternative to a cloud market dominated by US providers.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Leafcloud pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

71 / 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-360
Key management with a European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
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 July 2, 2026

Headquarters	NL (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	greenedge - GreenEdge B.V., NL (NL)Technically measured
Category	Cloud IaaS
Type	Product
Website	leaf.cloud ↗

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 Leafcloud

The European alternatives to Leafcloud 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

84 European Cloud IaaS 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 Leafcloud

Leafcloud is headquartered in NL 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 Leafcloud scores best on data residency.

Leafcloud 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 Leafcloud 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 Leafcloud?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Leafcloud include 1984 Hosting, acens and Aiven. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Leafcloud?

Our list of EU alternatives to Leafcloud is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

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

Leafcloud is headquartered in NL (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Leafcloud 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 July 2, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice during the full audit of June and July 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".

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 Cloud IaaS

Cloud IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service — virtual machines, storage, networking. 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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