Non-EU vendorCollaborationHeadquarters: US

Microsoft Teams: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform that brings together persistent chat, channels, group calls and video meetings with screen sharing, plus file sharing and integration with Microsoft and third-party apps. It is aimed at organisations of all sizes and is part of the Microsoft 365 suite. Each team is backed by a Microsoft 365 group with a SharePoint site, an Exchange Online mailbox and a OneNote notebook. Teams runs as a cloud service on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and in the browser, managed by administrators in the Teams admin center.

Microsoft is a US company, and Teams is proprietary software, not open source. Microsoft's EU Data Boundary commits to storing and processing customer data for Microsoft 365 in the EU and EFTA for tenants with a sign-up location there, but its documentation notes limited circumstances in which data is still transferred outside that boundary. For a European organisation, the provider remains subject to US jurisdiction, so the contract terms and tenant configuration deserve scrutiny.

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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)
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, EUVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-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 Teams

The European alternatives to Microsoft Teams 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 Teams

Microsoft Teams 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 Teams hosts data in US, EU. 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 Teams 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 Teams 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 Teams?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Microsoft Teams include OpenTalk, Teamwire and Stackfield. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Microsoft Teams?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Microsoft Teams include OpenTalk, Wire, Nextcloud Talk, BigBlueButton (self-host), CryptPad and FluffyChat. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Microsoft Teams is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU. 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 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/licensing/terms/product/MicrosoftTeams/all
Security page / trust center: microsoft.com/en-us/trust-center
EU hosting documented: microsoft.com/en-us/trust-center/privacy

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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