EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorHRHeadquarters: GB

MHR: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

MHR is a UK software provider for HR, payroll, workforce management and finance. Its main products are People First, a cloud-based platform that connects HR, payroll, workforce management and finance, and iTrent, a system for HR and payroll. The website lists ISO 27001, SOC 2 and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications and has separate sites for the United Kingdom and Ireland and for the United States.

The legal entities named in the privacy notice are MHR International UK Limited, based in Nottingham, and MHR Celtic Limited, based in Dublin. The website names no parent company or majority shareholder. According to the privacy notice, the company processes personal data in line with UK and EU data protection law and transfers data outside the EEA only on a contractual basis. Storage locations for customer data are not named. For a European organisation, the main points are the UK base and the questions of where payroll data is stored and which sub-processors are used.

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Sovereignty score
32 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
  • Data residency SOV-30
    No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-340
    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-630
    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
HeadquartersGB (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionYes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingOTHERVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
CategoryHR
TypeProduct
Websitemhrglobal.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to MHR

The European alternatives to MHR 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

58 European HR 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 MHR

MHR is headquartered in GB, 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.

MHR 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.

MHR 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 MHR 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 MHR?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to MHR include AFAS, AlexisHR and ATOSS Workforce Intelligence. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to MHR?

Our list of EU alternatives to MHR is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

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

MHR is headquartered in GB (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 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 HR

HR: Human resources — personnel management, payroll, recruiting. 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 MHR — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score