EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorAIHeadquarters: US

OpenAI / ChatGPT: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

OpenAI is a US artificial intelligence company that develops the GPT family of large language models. Its best-known product is ChatGPT, a chat assistant that works with text, images and speech: it writes, summarises, translates, helps with programming, searches the web and, through agent features, carries out multi-step tasks. Organisations can use workspaces for teams and enterprises, and developers access the models through an API. OpenAI delivers this as a cloud service through the web, apps and API; the models are not open source.

OpenAI is based in San Francisco and, since October 2025, has been a public benefit corporation under a non-profit foundation; Microsoft is a significant shareholder. According to OpenAI, API customers and new ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu workspaces can store data in Europe; this does not apply to existing API projects. It remains a US provider, so you assess per product which regional options apply and whether US legislation such as the CLOUD Act is relevant.

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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
HeadquartersUS (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionOnly for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingUS, EUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantNoVendor-stated
Hosting signalCLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryAI
TypeProduct
Websiteopenai.com ↗

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 OpenAI / ChatGPT

The European alternatives to OpenAI / ChatGPT 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

55 European AI 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 OpenAI / ChatGPT

OpenAI / ChatGPT 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.

OpenAI / ChatGPT 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.

OpenAI / ChatGPT 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 OpenAI / ChatGPT 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 OpenAI / ChatGPT?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to OpenAI / ChatGPT include Aleph Alpha, Langdock and LightOn. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to OpenAI / ChatGPT?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to OpenAI / ChatGPT include Mistral AI. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is OpenAI / ChatGPT GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

OpenAI / ChatGPT is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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".

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 AI

AI: Artificial intelligence — large language models, translation, generative AI. 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 OpenAI / ChatGPT — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score