Non-EU vendorCollaborationHeadquarters: US

Microsoft 365: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Microsoft 365 is a subscription service from Microsoft that combines office software with cloud services. It includes the Office apps, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, for PC and Mac, plus online services for email, file storage, collaboration and meetings, including Teams. The enterprise plans also cover Windows 11 Enterprise, device management through Intune and endpoint protection with Defender for Endpoint. It is intended for organisations from small to large and is delivered as SaaS, with locally installed apps connected to the cloud.

Microsoft is a US company, and Microsoft 365 is proprietary software with no open-source edition. Under its EU Data Boundary, Microsoft states that it stores and processes Customer Data and pseudonymised personal data for in-scope services in datacentres in the EU and EFTA, subject to limited exceptions. Tenants with a sign-up location in the EU or EFTA are in scope; customers using Multi-Geo are not. For a European organisation, the provider's jurisdiction remains a separate consideration alongside where the data is stored.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Microsoft 365 pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

27 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (US, EU, APAC)
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 July 2, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified 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	US, EU, APACVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents	3 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal	AKAMAI-AS - Akamai Technologies, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	Collaboration
Type	Product
Website	microsoft.com ↗

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 Microsoft 365

The European alternatives to Microsoft 365 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

37 European Collaboration 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 Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 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.

Microsoft 365 hosts data in US, EU, APAC. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Microsoft 365 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 Microsoft 365 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 Microsoft 365?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Microsoft 365 include Office.eu, Smash and SoftMaker Office. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Microsoft 365?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Microsoft 365 include Office.eu, Nextcloud, Open-Xchange and CryptPad. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Microsoft 365 GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Microsoft 365 is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU, APAC. 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 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".

Data Processing Agreement (DPA): microsoft.com/en-us/trust-center
Security page / trust center: microsoft.com/en-us/trust-center
EU hosting documented: microsoft.com/en-us/trust-center

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Collaboration

Collaboration: Team communication, file sharing, video conferencing, document editing. 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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