Non-EU vendorProject ManagementHeadquarters: US

Notion: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Notion is a workspace for notes, documents, wikis, databases and project and task tracking. Content is built from blocks, and databases can be shown as tables, boards, calendars or timelines. The vendor describes it as an AI workspace for teams, with search that returns answers with citations and agents that automate work. It is used by individuals, small businesses and large companies, and is delivered as a cloud service through the web, with apps for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS.

Notion is developed by Notion Labs, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, and is proprietary software, not open source and not self-hostable. Data is stored in the United States by default. Customers on the Enterprise plan can choose a data region, including the EU (Frankfurt), but account information, usage data and data handled by subprocessors such as LLM providers are not covered by that choice. For a European organisation, the provider is under US jurisdiction, so it is worth checking which data stays in the chosen region and which does not.

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Sovereignty score

27 / 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 (US, EU)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
Key management with a non-European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-615
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 8, 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 (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	US, EUVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents	1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal	NOTION-WEB - Notion Labs, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	Project Management
Type	Product
Website	notion.so ↗

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 Notion

The European alternatives to Notion 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

34 European Project 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 Notion

Notion 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.

Notion hosts data in US, EU. 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.

Notion 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 Notion 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 Notion?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Notion include Nuclino, XWiki and Nextcloud. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Notion?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Notion include XWiki, Nextcloud, Kanboard, OpenProject, Redmine (self-host) and Taiga. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Notion is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU. 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 8, 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".

Security page / trust center: notion.so/security

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

ISO/IEC 27001Vendor-statedISO/IEC 27701Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Project Management

Project Management: Project planning, issue tracking, knowledge management, team collaboration. 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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