EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignMessagingHeadquarters: FR

Olvid: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Olvid is an encrypted messaging service for mobile devices and desktop, with one-to-one and group chats. Users can send text, voice notes, images, videos and files. An account needs no phone number, name or email address. According to the website, each message and file is encrypted with a single-use key (forward secrecy) and metadata is encrypted as well. The iOS app (version 0.8.2) and the Android app (version 0.9.2) each received a CSPN certification from the French cybersecurity agency ANSSI, and the evaluation reports have been published.

Olvid SAS is based in Paris. Messages pass through servers, which according to the privacy policy run on Amazon Web Services; the region is not stated. Olvid says its security does not depend on trusting the servers. The project states that it is open source; according to Wikipedia, the client is licensed under the AGPL while the server software is proprietary. A European organisation should bear in mind that the infrastructure runs with a US cloud 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
HeadquartersFR (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 signalAMAZON-02 - Amazon.com, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryMessaging
TypeProduct
Websiteolvid.io ↗

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 Olvid

The European alternatives to Olvid come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 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

21 European Messaging 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 Olvid

Olvid is headquartered in FR 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 Olvid scores best on data residency.

Olvid 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 Olvid 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 Olvid?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Olvid include Balsio, Berty and Conversations (XMPP). On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Olvid?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Olvid include Berty, Conversations (XMPP), Delta Chat, Dino and Gajim. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Olvid is headquartered in FR (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Olvid 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)
olvid.io/privacy/en/
Security page / trust center
olvid.io/technology/en/

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Messaging

Messaging: Personal messaging — chat, group conversations, media sharing. 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 Olvid — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score