EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceData Governance & MDMHeadquarters: AU

Magda: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Magda is a federated, open-source data catalogue for both big and small data. It gives a single view of data regardless of where it is stored or where it came from, by combining metadata from sources such as CKAN, data.json, Excel or CSV inventories and REST APIs into one search index. Magda offers hybrid search (vector and BM25), an extensible "minion" framework that checks links, normalises formats and calculates quality, previews of tables and maps, and authorisation built on Open Policy Agent. The software runs on Kubernetes and is installed with Helm, in the cloud, on premises or locally.

The project was started by CSIRO's Data61 and the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and was built for data.gov.au, which it served from 2019 to June 2025. Development continues in the open on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 licence. Because you host Magda yourself, your organisation decides where the catalogue and its metadata reside. The project originates in Australia. No vendor-hosted cloud is required.

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Sovereignty score
79 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (AU)
  • 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-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 4, 2026
HeadquartersAU (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionNo — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
CategoryData Governance & MDM
TypeProduct
Websitemagda.io ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Magda

The European alternatives to Magda 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

18 European Data Governance & MDM 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 Magda

Magda is headquartered in AU, 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.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Magda scores best on data residency.

Magda 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 Magda 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 Magda?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Magda include Accutics, BiG EVAL and CluedIn. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Magda?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Magda include Data Contract CLI. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Magda is headquartered in AU (OTHER) and hosts data in EU. 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 4, 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 Data Governance & MDM

Data Governance & MDM: Data catalogues, lineage, data quality, ownership and master data management. 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 Magda — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score