Self-hosted / open sourceDatabase & Data ManagementHeadquarters: US

MySQL: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

MySQL is a relational database management system that stores data in tables and is queried with SQL. It is widely used as the data store behind web applications, content management systems and business software. Oracle offers it in several forms: the Community Edition, which you can download and run on your own servers, the commercial Enterprise Edition with additional management tools and support, an embedded edition for OEMs and ISVs, and MySQL HeatWave, a managed cloud service. Related tools include MySQL Shell, Router and Workbench.

MySQL was created by the Swedish company MySQL AB and has been owned by Oracle Corporation, a US company, since Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems was completed in 2010. The code is available under the GNU GPL version 2 or under a proprietary licence. Self-hosting the Community Edition lets you decide where data is stored and who operates it, while development direction and the commercial editions remain with a US parent company. Community forks such as MariaDB and Percona Server exist and aim to stay compatible with MySQL.

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

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Sovereignty score

69 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-3100
No hosting in Europe (self-host)
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 6, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Data hosting	Self-hosted, e.g. in self-host (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	Database & Data Management
Type	Product
Website	mysql.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to MySQL

The European alternatives to MySQL 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

13 European Database & Data Management 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 MySQL

MySQL 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.

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

MySQL 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 MySQL 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 MySQL?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to MySQL include Aiven, ArangoDB and DuckDB. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to MySQL?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to MySQL include DuckDB, Elastic, Firebird SQL, MariaDB and Meilisearch. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

MySQL is headquartered in US and hosts data in self-host. 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 6, 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 Database & Data Management

Database & Data Management: Database systems, data warehousing, managed database services and data platforms. 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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