Self-hosted / open sourceVirtualisation & ContainersHeadquarters: GB

MicroCloud: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

MicroCloud is an open source cloud platform from Canonical for building a small private cloud cluster in minutes. It combines LXD for virtualisation, MicroCeph for software-defined storage and MicroOVN for software-defined networking, and targets data centres, edge sites and development environments. A cluster starts with a single node; three or more are recommended for high availability. It runs on Ubuntu Server or Ubuntu Core. You can deploy it yourself from the documentation, or have Canonical design, build and validate the cloud with you; optional Ubuntu Pro adds commercial support and security maintenance.

MicroCloud is developed by Canonical, a privately held company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, and registered in the Isle of Man. Because the cluster runs on hardware you choose, workloads and data stay in your own or EU data centres. The UK is outside the EU, so the vendor and any support contract fall under non-EU jurisdiction, while the open source code can still be run and inspected independently.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with MicroCloud pre-selected

Sovereignty score

77 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
Data residency SOV-3100
No hosting in Europe (self-hosted)
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 6, 2026

Headquarters	GB (OTHER)	Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Yes — found adequate by the European Commission	Verified by hand
Data hosting	Self-hosted, e.g. in self-hosted (your choice)	Verified by hand
Open-source	Yes	Verified by hand
GDPR-compliant	Yes	Vendor-stated
Category	Virtualisation & Containers
Type	Product
Website	canonical.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to MicroCloud

The European alternatives to MicroCloud 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

20 European Virtualisation & Containers 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 MicroCloud

MicroCloud 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.

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

MicroCloud 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 MicroCloud 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 MicroCloud?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to MicroCloud include APPUiO (VSHN), Gardener and Giant Swarm. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to MicroCloud?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to MicroCloud include Gardener, Giant Swarm, Harvester, IncludeOS, K3s, Kamaji and Kubermatic. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

MicroCloud is headquartered in GB (OTHER) and hosts data in self-hosted. 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 6, 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

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

Report a vulnerability: github.com/canonical/microcloud/security/policy
Supported versions: canonical.com/microcloud/docs/latest/reference/releases-snaps/
Organisation behind the open-source project: Canonical

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Virtualisation & Containers

Virtualisation & Containers: Virtualisation platforms, container management, Kubernetes distributions and hypervisors. 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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