EU sovereignMaps & NavigationHeadquarters: DE

OpenRouteService: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

openrouteservice is a set of open-source geo-services operated by HeiGIT gGmbH. Through a single interface it offers routing for cars, trucks, bikes, walking, hiking and wheelchairs, isochrones (reachability areas), time-distance matrices, geocoding with Pelias, points of interest, elevation data based on SRTM, and route optimisation based on VROOM. The services use OpenStreetMap data and, according to the website, are free to use. You can call them through the public API or run them yourself.

HeiGIT gGmbH is based in Heidelberg, Germany, and is the data controller for the service. The software is open source and dual-licensed under GPL-3.0 and LGPL-3.0, and the README recommends Docker for self-hosting, which allows an organisation to keep routing requests on its own infrastructure. The privacy policy states that data handled by service providers may be transferred to countries outside the EU under contractual safeguards.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with OpenRouteService 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 July 2, 2026

Headquarters	DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents	1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal	BELWUE - Universitaet Stuttgart, DE (DE)Technically measured
Category	Maps & Navigation
Type	Product
Website	openrouteservice.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 OpenRouteService

The European alternatives to OpenRouteService 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

37 European Maps & Navigation 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 OpenRouteService

OpenRouteService 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 OpenRouteService scores best on data residency.

OpenRouteService 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 OpenRouteService 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 OpenRouteService?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to OpenRouteService include BRouter, calimoto and cartes.gouv.fr. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to OpenRouteService?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to OpenRouteService include BRouter and GraphHopper. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

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

Security page / trust center: heigit.org/privacy-policy/

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 23, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Maps & Navigation

Maps & Navigation: Maps, route planning and navigation services. 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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