EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceMessagingHeadquarters: DE

Monal: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Monal is a chat app for the open XMPP protocol, available for iOS, iPadOS and macOS. XMPP is a standardised protocol for real-time communication: anyone can run their own server, and users can chat with each other across different apps and accounts, much as with email. It is distributed through Apple's App Stores.

Monal is developed by a lead developer in Germany, with no company or foundation behind it, and is released under the BSD licence. Work on its new user interface was co-funded through the EU's NGI Zero programme, administered by NLnet. Your messages travel via the XMPP server you choose yourself, so you decide where they are stored. According to the app's privacy policy, the developer does not see your messages. The project's own push servers, used for notifications, run in Europe (Finland and Germany); the notifications are delivered through Apple's push system. Where your own server provides no STUN or TURN service, calls use project servers.

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Sovereignty score
94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • 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-6100
    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 16, 2026
Headquarters
DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Messaging
Type
Product
Website
monal-im.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Monal

The European alternatives to Monal come from our knowledge base of over 9,500 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

36 European Messaging 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 Monal

Monal is headquartered in DE and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

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

Monal 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 Monal 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 Monal?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Monal include 360dialog, Balsio and Berty. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Monal?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Monal include Berty, Conversations (XMPP), Delta Chat and Dino. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Monal is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Monal an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

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 16, 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

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in Messaging

Messaging: Personal messaging — chat, group conversations, media sharing. 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 Monal — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score