EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceSocial MediaHeadquarters: DE

Mastodon: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Mastodon is a decentralised social network built on ActivityPub. Users post text, pictures, audio and video, with polls, content warnings and image descriptions, and read a chronological timeline without algorithms or ads. The network consists of independently operated servers, each with its own rules and moderation, and one account can follow people on any compatible server, including other fediverse platforms. You can join an existing server or host your own.

Mastodon is free and open-source software under the AGPLv3+ licence. It is developed by Mastodon GmbH in Germany, which operates as a non-profit through the fiscal sponsor WE AID; a US 501(c)(3) entity also exists, and the team has announced a planned Belgian non-profit parent. Because each server has its own operator, data location depends on that operator. An organisation can run its own instance in an EU data centre, or choose a server after checking its operator and hosting country. Posts federated to other servers are copied there under those operators' rules. Self-hosting means handling updates, moderation and backups.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Mastodon pre-selected
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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 July 2, 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
Hosting signal
FASTLY - Fastly, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category
Social Media
Type
Product
Website
joinmastodon.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 Mastodon

The European alternatives to Mastodon 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

34 European Social Media 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 Mastodon

Mastodon 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 Mastodon scores best on data residency.

Mastodon 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 Mastodon 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 Mastodon?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Mastodon include Agorapulse, Akkoma and BeReal. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Mastodon?

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

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

Mastodon is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Mastodon 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 July 2, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice during the full audit of June and July 2026. Source links have been recorded per record since 20 September 2026.

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 Social Media

Social Media: Social networks — posts, media, communities. 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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Open in the alternatives dashboardMissing a vendor? Submit itAre you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Social Media page — with no effect on your score
8 European alternatives to Mastodon — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score