EU sovereignSearch EnginesHeadquarters: DE

OceanHero: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

OceanHero is a search engine offered as a browser extension and a mobile app. Its results are powered by Microsoft Bing. The service's advertising revenue funds ocean plastic removal. According to its FAQ, search data is anonymised within 24 hours, and the company says it does not track browsing history or build personal profiles. The site links to a privacy policy, a cookie policy and an imprint.

The operator is OceanHero GmbH, with an address in Düsseldorf, Germany. It is therefore a German limited liability company established inside the European Union. The website does not name the owners of the GmbH or the location of its servers. Because the results come from Microsoft Bing, Microsoft's own policies also play a role. For a European organisation this is a European consumer service rather than a business search platform. The website does not mention a data processing agreement for business use.

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

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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 11, 2026

Headquarters	DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	Search Engines
Type	Product
Website	oceanhero.today ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to OceanHero

The European alternatives to OceanHero 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

15 European Search Engines 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 OceanHero

OceanHero 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 OceanHero scores best on data residency.

OceanHero 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 OceanHero 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 OceanHero?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to OceanHero include Ecosia, Lilo and MetaGer. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to OceanHero?

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

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

OceanHero is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes OceanHero 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

Digital sovereignty in Search Engines

Search Engines: Search engines — privacy-friendly web searching. 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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