EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceVirtualisation & ContainersHeadquarters: GB

Multipass: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Multipass is an open-source tool from Canonical that launches Ubuntu virtual machines with a single command and can configure them with cloud-init. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, using each platform's native hypervisor: Host Compute System on Windows, Apple's Virtualization framework on macOS and QEMU on Linux. It is installed on the user's own computer as a local tool, and no hosted service is involved. Its code is published under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

Canonical is a private company limited by shares, with its head office in London, United Kingdom, and its copyright notice names Canonical Ltd. The company was founded and funded by an individual founder, and its ownership structure is not set out on its website. The United Kingdom is outside the EU and the EEA, so Canonical is a non-EU vendor. Multipass itself does not send workload data to the vendor, and the sovereignty question for a European organisation concerns the Ubuntu images and updates it downloads.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Multipass pre-selected
MastodonLinkedInBlueskyXEmail
Sovereignty score
77 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
  • 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 11, 2026
HeadquartersGB (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionYes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Data hostingSelf-hosted, e.g. in OTHER (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantNoVendor-stated
CategoryVirtualisation & Containers
TypeProduct
Websitecanonical.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Multipass

The European alternatives to Multipass 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

Is Multipass one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with Multipass

Multipass 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.

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

Multipass 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 Multipass 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 Multipass?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Multipass 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 Multipass?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Multipass 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 Multipass GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Multipass is headquartered in GB (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. 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 October 11, 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".

We found none of these signals on the vendor's own site when we checked.

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

Checked on October 11, 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.

Also in this category

See all →
Open in the alternatives dashboardMissing a vendor? Submit itAre you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Virtualisation & Containers page — with no effect on your score
8 European alternatives to Multipass — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score