EU sovereignForms & SurveysHeadquarters: DE

LimeSurvey (self-host): sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

LimeSurvey is an open-source platform for online surveys, questionnaires, polls and forms. It offers more than thirty question types, templates, conditional logic and branching, support for many languages, anonymous surveys and statistical analysis. It can be used in two ways: you install the Community Edition yourself on your own web server with PHP and a database, or you use the hosted service, LimeSurvey Cloud.

LimeSurvey GmbH is based in Hamburg, Germany. The software is released under GPL v2.0 or later. When self-hosted, all data stays on your own server or your provider's server. With LimeSurvey Cloud you choose a server location when creating the instance; the options include Germany and Finland, which the vendor recommends for EU customers, as well as locations outside Europe such as the United States. According to the vendor, data is stored exclusively in the selected country. For a European organisation, choosing an EU location or self-hosting is therefore a deliberate setting.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with LimeSurvey (self-host) pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

82 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US, 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-690
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

Headquarters	DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EU, US, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents	1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal	HETZNER-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
Category	Forms & Surveys
Type	Product
Website	limesurvey.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 LimeSurvey (self-host)

The European alternatives to LimeSurvey (self-host) 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

41 European Forms & Surveys 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 LimeSurvey (self-host)

LimeSurvey (self-host) 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.

LimeSurvey (self-host) hosts data in EU, US, 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.

LimeSurvey (self-host) 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 LimeSurvey (self-host) 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 LimeSurvey (self-host)?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to LimeSurvey (self-host) include 123FormBuilder, AidaForm and Askia. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to LimeSurvey (self-host)?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to LimeSurvey (self-host) include CryptPad Forms. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is LimeSurvey (self-host) GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

LimeSurvey (self-host) is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes LimeSurvey (self-host) 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 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: limesurvey.org/template/online-templates/privacy-templates

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Forms & Surveys

Forms & Surveys: Online forms, surveys and feedback tools. 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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