EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceSocial MediaHeadquarters: JP

Misskey: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Misskey is free and open-source software for creating your own social networking service; it is the foundation for running a platform rather than a ready-made service. It offers notes (posts) with media and polls, reactions, custom emoji, channels, roles, moderation tools, multi-factor authentication, and a web interface with themes and widgets. Through ActivityPub, Misskey federates with other Misskey servers and with Mastodon and other Fediverse software. Anyone can run their own server; the backend uses Node.js and PostgreSQL.

Misskey was created in 2014 by the Japanese developer Eiji 'syuilo' Shinoda and is developed by the Misskey Project, a non-profit effort of volunteers that relies on donations. The code is released under the AGPL-3.0 licence. The well-known instance misskey.io is operated by the Japanese company MisskeyHQ K.K. A European organisation can host Misskey itself, for example in an EU data centre, and so keeps control over its data and moderation.

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Sovereignty score
79 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (JP)
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • 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-675
    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 9, 2026
HeadquartersJP (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionYes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalCLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategorySocial Media
TypeProduct
Websitemisskey-hub.net ↗

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 Misskey

The European alternatives to Misskey 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

34 European Social Media 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 Misskey

Misskey is headquartered in JP, 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.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Misskey scores best on data residency.

Misskey 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 Misskey 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 Misskey?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Misskey include Akkoma, BookWyrm and Diaspora. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Misskey?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Misskey include Akkoma, Diaspora, Friendica, GoToSocial, Hubzilla, Lemmy (EU-host) and Mastodon. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Misskey is headquartered in JP (OTHER) and hosts data in EU. 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 9, 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

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8 European alternatives to Misskey — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score