EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorSocial MediaHeadquarters: US

Meetup: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Meetup is a platform for finding and organising local groups and events around shared interests. Members join groups and sign up for gatherings, while organisers manage their community. It is delivered as a web service and an app.

Meetup has its seat in New York, in the United States, and has been owned by the Italian company Bending Spoons since 24 January 2024. The website names Bending Spoons Operations S.p.A. as the operating company, under the management and coordination of Bending Spoons S.p.A. in Milan. The privacy policy in the help centre names Bending Spoons US Inc. as the data controller, and data is hosted in the United States. As a company with a US seat, Meetup falls under US jurisdiction, including the CLOUD Act. A European organisation using Meetup should therefore check which transfer mechanisms apply to member and event data.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Meetup pre-selected
MastodonLinkedInBlueskyXEmail
Sovereignty score
17 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-30
    No hosting in Europe (US)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
    Key management with a non-European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-615
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

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 11, 2026
Headquarters
US (US)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent company
ITVerified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
USVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
Social Media
Type
Product
Website
meetup.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Meetup

The European alternatives to Meetup 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

Is Meetup one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with Meetup

Meetup is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model. The ultimate owner is based in IT, also within Europe.

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

Meetup is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Meetup 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 Meetup?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Meetup 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 Meetup?

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

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

Meetup is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 11, 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 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

See all →
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 Meetup — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score