EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceEmail (Personal)Headquarters: DE

Mailvelope: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Mailvelope is a browser extension for Google Chrome and Firefox that adds OpenPGP encryption and signing to webmail, so that users can protect messages within the browser. Users create and hold their own keys. The software can be configured for webmail providers beyond the major ones, and the vendor also offers business editions for Google Workspace and Nextcloud.

The extension is developed by Mailvelope GmbH, based in Zellingen, Germany, and its source code is published on GitHub under the AGPL-3.0 licence, so it can be inspected and rebuilt. The vendor states that Mailvelope adheres to the GDPR and that encryption runs on the client side, so according to the vendor the provider cannot read message content. The extension runs in the user's own browser, so no vendor hosting location applies. For a European organisation, this is a German open-source tool without a central service.

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Sovereignty score
94 / 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-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-6100
    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 12, 2026
Headquarters
DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Email (Personal)
Type
Product
Website
mailvelope.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Mailvelope

The European alternatives to Mailvelope come from our knowledge base of over 8,000 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

40 European Email (Personal) 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 Mailvelope

Mailvelope 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.

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

Mailvelope 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 Mailvelope 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 Mailvelope?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Mailvelope include ABV, Bluewin Mail and CounterMail. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Mailvelope?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Mailvelope include Disroot and FairEmail. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Mailvelope is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Mailvelope 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 12, 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 Email (Personal)

Email (Personal): Personal email services — inbox, calendar, contacts. 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.

Also in this category

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8 European alternatives to Mailvelope — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score