Self-hosted / open sourceVPNHeadquarters: CH

Mysterium VPN: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Mysterium VPN is a decentralised VPN service built on the Mysterium Network, a peer-to-peer network in which independent operators run nodes that relay traffic. Users can select exit nodes by city. The network uses the MYST token, and its software is published under the GPL-3.0 licence on GitHub, so the code can be inspected and built independently.

The network is developed by BlockDev AG, whose seat is in Zug, Switzerland, while discovery services are run by NetSys Inc., whose country is not stated. Node operators are spread across many countries, so no single hosting location can be confirmed, and the privacy policy contains no GDPR statement. Switzerland is outside the EU. A European organisation should weigh that traffic and metadata pass through independent third-party nodes whose jurisdictions it cannot control, which makes the service difficult to assess for business use.

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

Mastodon LinkedIn Bluesky X Email

Sovereignty score

92 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
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-690
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

Headquarters	CH (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	VPN
Type	Product
Website	mysterium.network ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Mysterium VPN

The European alternatives to Mysterium VPN come from our knowledge base of over 8,000 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

26 European VPN vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is Mysterium VPN 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 Mysterium VPN

Mysterium VPN is headquartered in Switzerland and falls under Swiss law, including the revised Swiss data protection act. Switzerland is not an EU member, but the European Commission recognises its level of data protection as adequate. Its Swiss headquarters does not by itself bring it under US legislation such as the CLOUD Act.

Mysterium VPN 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.

Mysterium VPN 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 Mysterium VPN 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 Mysterium VPN?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Mysterium VPN include AdGuard VPN, AirVPN and Avast SecureLine VPN. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Mysterium VPN?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Mysterium VPN include Cryptostorm. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Mysterium VPN GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Mysterium VPN is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in OTHER. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Mysterium VPN 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 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 VPN

VPN: Virtual private network — privacy protection, encrypted connection. 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 dashboard Missing a vendor? Submit it Are you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the VPN page — with no effect on your score