EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignCollaborationHeadquarters: DE

Nextcloud: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Nextcloud is an open-source collaboration platform that organisations run on their own infrastructure. Nextcloud Hub combines file storage and sync, Talk for chat and video calls, groupware with calendar, contacts and mail, an office suite, an AI assistant and workflow automation. It is used by public bodies, enterprises, education institutions, service providers and individuals. The server software is free to install; Nextcloud GmbH also sells Enterprise subscriptions with support, and hosting providers can offer Nextcloud as a service.

Nextcloud GmbH is based in Germany, with offices in Stuttgart and Berlin, and the server software is licensed under the AGPL-3.0. The company states that everything it does is open source, with no open core or proprietary extensions. Because the software can be self-hosted, an organisation decides where its data resides, who administers it and which jurisdiction applies, whether in its own data centre or with a European hosting provider. Self-hosting places operational responsibility, such as updates, backups and security, with the organisation or its chosen provider.

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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 July 2, 2026
HeadquartersDE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Compliance documents2 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signalHETZNER-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
CategoryCollaboration
TypeProduct
Websitenextcloud.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 Nextcloud

The European alternatives to Nextcloud 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

37 European Collaboration 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 Nextcloud

Nextcloud 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 Nextcloud scores best on data residency.

Nextcloud 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 Nextcloud 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 Nextcloud?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Nextcloud include BigBlueButton (self-host), CryptPad and Nextcloud Deck. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Nextcloud?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Nextcloud include BigBlueButton (self-host), CryptPad, Nextcloud Deck, FluffyChat and HedgeDoc. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Nextcloud is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Nextcloud 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 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)
nextcloud.com/privacy/
Security page / trust center
nextcloud.com/security/

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Collaboration

Collaboration: Team communication, file sharing, video conferencing, document editing. 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 Nextcloud — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score