EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceGIS & GeospatialHeadquarters: DE

OpenLayers: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

OpenLayers is a JavaScript library for putting a dynamic map in any web page. It displays map tiles, vector data and markers from many sources: tiled layers from services such as OpenStreetMap, OGC services, and vector formats including GeoJSON, TopoJSON, KML, GML and Mapbox vector tiles. It renders with Canvas 2D and WebGL and supports mobile devices. Developers install it as the npm package ol, which includes TypeScript declarations, or use a release from the project site. It is a software library embedded in websites and applications, not a hosted service.

OpenLayers is released under the 2-clause BSD licence and has been a project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) since November 2007. MetaCarta originally created it; today the OpenLayers dev team develops it on GitHub, with financial sponsors. The code runs in the user's browser, and OpenLayers itself does not supply map data. The tile and data services an application connects to therefore determine where map requests are sent and which jurisdiction they fall under.

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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
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
YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal
CLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category
GIS & Geospatial
Type
Product
Website
openlayers.org ↗

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 OpenLayers

The European alternatives to OpenLayers 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

45 European GIS & Geospatial 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 OpenLayers

OpenLayers 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 OpenLayers scores best on data residency.

OpenLayers 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 OpenLayers 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 OpenLayers?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to OpenLayers include 52°North, Airbus Defence & Space and Camptocamp. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to OpenLayers?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to OpenLayers include 52°North and Camptocamp. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

OpenLayers is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes OpenLayers 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".

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 GIS & Geospatial

GIS & Geospatial: Geographic information systems, map visualisation and spatial data analysis. 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 OpenLayers — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score