EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorDNS Privacy & FilteringHeadquarters: US

OpenDNS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

OpenDNS is a DNS service with free consumer products for home networks. OpenDNS Family Shield comes preconfigured to block adult content and needs no sign-up. OpenDNS Home offers customisable filtering and basic protection after registration. The OpenDNS Public Service provides basic DNS-layer protection without registration. Settings apply to every device on the home network. For businesses the website points to Cisco Secure Access; the business services were previously offered as Cisco Umbrella. OpenDNS is delivered as a cloud service and is not open source.

OpenDNS was founded in San Francisco and has been owned by the US company Cisco since August 2015. The website states that the service runs on geographically distributed data centres, but the page does not list their locations. For a European organisation this means that DNS queries pass through a US provider that falls under US jurisdiction and applies Cisco's privacy statement. Those who want to keep DNS traffic under European jurisdiction should consider an alternative.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with OpenDNS pre-selected
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Sovereignty score
17 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-30
    No hosting in Europe (US)
  • 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 4, 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
USVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
DNS Privacy & Filtering
Type
Product
Website
opendns.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to OpenDNS

The European alternatives to OpenDNS 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

24 European DNS Privacy & Filtering 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 OpenDNS

OpenDNS 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.

OpenDNS hosts data outside the EU (US). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

OpenDNS 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 OpenDNS 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 OpenDNS?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to OpenDNS include AdGuard DNS, AdGuard Home and Blocky. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to OpenDNS?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to OpenDNS include AdGuard Home and Blocky. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

OpenDNS is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. 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 4, 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 DNS Privacy & Filtering

DNS Privacy & Filtering: Privacy-friendly DNS services, ad blocking and DNS filtering. 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 OpenDNS — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score