EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceEducation & LMSHeadquarters: NZ

Mahara: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Mahara is an open-source ePortfolio system: a web application in which students and staff record evidence of their learning, reflect on it and share their portfolios. It is used for study, professional development, work-integrated learning, assessment, showcase and employability. Portfolios can be shared with one person, a group or everyone, with comments and feedback, and can be submitted to a learning management system via LTI for marking. Mahara is server software that you install on your own database (PostgreSQL or MySQL).

Mahara is developed and maintained by Catalyst, a company in New Zealand (Catalyst.Net Limited operates mahara.org). The software is licensed under the GNU GPL, version 3 or later. Since April 2023 the public GitHub repository is no longer updated; according to the project, the latest code is available through a subscription from Catalyst. If you install Mahara on your own servers, your users' data stays with you. For mahara.org itself, Catalyst states that data is stored in New Zealand. The maintainer is therefore not established in the EU.

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Sovereignty score
77 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (NZ)
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (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-665
    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 14, 2026
Headquarters
NZ (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Yes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Data hosting
Self-hosted, e.g. in OTHER (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Education & LMS
Type
Product
Website
mahara.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Mahara

The European alternatives to Mahara come from our knowledge base of over 8,400 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

64 European Education & LMS 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 Mahara

Mahara is headquartered in NZ, 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.

Mahara hosts data outside the EU (OTHER). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

Mahara 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 Mahara 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 Mahara?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Mahara include Anton, CAMPUSonline and Chamilo. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Mahara?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Mahara include Chamilo, Claroline Connect and Forma LMS. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Mahara is headquartered in NZ (OTHER) and hosts data in 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 14, 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

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in Education & LMS

Education & LMS: Learning platforms, learning management systems and educational software. 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 Mahara — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score