EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceIoT & EmbeddedHeadquarters: DE

open62541: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

open62541 is an open-source implementation of the OPC UA communication standard, written in C99 with minimal dependencies and aimed at embedded systems and industrial devices. Developers use it as a library to add OPC UA client and server functions to their own products, for example to connect machines and controllers to a plant network. It is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, which the project states is free of charge, including for commercial use.

The official maintainer is o6 Automation GmbH, with an address in Karlsruhe, Germany; its managing director is named in the project's imprint. Because the library is built into the user's own products, operation rests with the user. The maintainer also offers paid support, consulting, training and development, which are optional. For a European organisation this is an OPC UA implementation maintained by a German company, with no dependency on a proprietary SDK from outside the EU.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with open62541 pre-selected
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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 October 12, 2026
Headquarters
DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
IoT & Embedded
Type
Product
Website
open62541.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to open62541

The European alternatives to open62541 come from our knowledge base of over 8,000 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

90 European IoT & Embedded 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 open62541

open62541 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 open62541 scores best on data residency.

open62541 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 open62541 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 open62541?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to open62541 include 1NCE, Actility ThingPark and akenza. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to open62541?

Our list of EU alternatives to open62541 is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is open62541 GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

open62541 is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes open62541 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 12, 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 IoT & Embedded

IoT & Embedded: Internet of Things platforms, embedded systems and industrial IoT solutions. 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 open62541 — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score