EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignDomain Name RegistrarsHeadquarters: AT

nic.at: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

nic.at GmbH is the official registry for all domains ending in .at, and for the extensions .co.at and .or.at. It describes itself as the only registry for .at domains. The company maintains the database of these domains, provides public Whois data, and handles holder and registrar support, including a customer login for holders who registered directly with nic.at. Together with its foundation owner it represents Austrian interests in ICANN, CENTR and RIPE. It has operated the .at zone since 1988.

nic.at GmbH is based in Salzburg, Austria, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Internet Privatstiftung Austria, a foundation that holds the .at domain administration in trust for the general public. According to the company, the registry database and name servers are maintained under contract by the Vienna University Computer Center (ZID), and the data and name servers are technically protected against unauthorised access and failure. For a European organisation this means an Austrian registry under a national foundation owner, with no non-European owner identified.

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Sovereignty score
71 / 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-360
    Key management with a European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

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 10, 2026
Headquarters
AT (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Domain Name Registrars
Type
Product
Website
nic.at ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to nic.at

The European alternatives to nic.at 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

35 European Domain Name Registrars 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 nic.at

nic.at is headquartered in AT 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 nic.at scores best on data residency.

nic.at is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs nic.at 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 nic.at?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to nic.at include 101domain, Afnic and Aruba Domains. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to nic.at?

Our list of EU alternatives to nic.at is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is nic.at GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

nic.at is headquartered in AT (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes nic.at 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 10, 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 Domain Name Registrars

Domain Name Registrars: Companies that register and manage internet domain names. 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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8 European alternatives to nic.at — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score