Self-hosted / open sourceVirtualisation & ContainersHeadquarters: GB

LXD: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

LXD is an open source manager for virtual machines and system containers. It runs KVM-based VMs and LXC system containers that host a full Linux system, sets resource limits, and supports snapshots, live migration, projects for multi-user setups, hardware passthrough and OVN or SR-IOV networking. Instances start from images covering many Linux distributions and Windows VMs. LXD is software you install and operate yourself on your own servers, and commercial support is available through Ubuntu Pro.

LXD is developed by Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu, which is a privately held company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, and registered in the Isle of Man. The project is licensed under AGPL-3.0, with Apache-2.0 client libraries. Because you operate LXD yourself, workloads and data stay on the infrastructure you choose, including EU data centres. Note that the UK is outside the EU, so the vendor relationship, support contract and development roadmap sit under non-EU jurisdiction. Incus is a community fork of LXD for those who prefer independent governance.

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

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Sovereignty score

79 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
Data residency SOV-3100
Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, 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-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 5, 2026

Headquarters	GB (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Yes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	EU, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	Virtualisation & Containers
Type	Product
Website	canonical.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to LXD

The European alternatives to LXD 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

20 European Virtualisation & Containers 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 LXD

LXD is headquartered in GB, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

LXD hosts data in 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.

LXD 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 LXD 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 LXD?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to LXD include APPUiO (VSHN), Gardener and Giant Swarm. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to LXD?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to LXD include Gardener, Giant Swarm, Harvester, IncludeOS, K3s, Kamaji and Kubermatic. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

LXD is headquartered in GB (OTHER) and hosts data in 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 5, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

canonical.com/lxd

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

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

Report a vulnerability: github.com/canonical/lxd/security/policy
Supported versions: canonical.com/lxd/docs/latest/reference/releases-snap/
Organisation behind the open-source project: Canonical

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Virtualisation & Containers

Virtualisation & Containers: Virtualisation platforms, container management, Kubernetes distributions and hypervisors. 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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