Non-EU vendorDatabase & Data ManagementHeadquarters: US

Neo4j: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Neo4j is a graph database: data is stored as nodes and relationships, so that highly connected data such as networks, dependencies or knowledge graphs can be queried directly. Organisations use it for connected-data applications and as a basis for GraphRAG, in which language models are supplied with data from a graph. Neo4j is available in two ways: self-managed, as the Graph Database with additional analytics and data-science components, and as a managed cloud service called Aura (AuraDB), which runs on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.

Neo4j, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California (US); the project began in Sweden in 2007, and part of its engineering remains there. The Community Edition is open source under GPLv3, while the Enterprise Edition is closed source under a commercial licence. According to the Aura documentation, European regions are available, including Frankfurt, Paris and Ireland on AWS and several European regions on Azure and Google Cloud. Because the vendor is a US company, the service falls under US jurisdiction even when hosted in the EU.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Neo4j pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

61 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US)
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 July 2, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EU, USVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents	2 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal	CLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	Database & Data Management
Type	Product
Website	neo4j.com ↗

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 Neo4j

The European alternatives to Neo4j 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 Neo4j

Neo4j 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.

Neo4j hosts data in EU, US. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Neo4j 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 Neo4j 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 Neo4j?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Neo4j 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 Neo4j?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Neo4j 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 Neo4j GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Neo4j is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU, US. 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 July 2, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice during the full audit of June and July 2026. Source links have been recorded per record since 20 September 2026.

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".

Data Processing Agreement (DPA): neo4j.com/privacy-policy
Security page / trust center: neo4j.com/security

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

CSA STARConfirmed in registry

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

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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