EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceEnterprise SearchHeadquarters: US

OpenSearch: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

OpenSearch is an open-source search and observability suite for searching, analysing and monitoring large volumes of data. It covers document and enterprise search, vector search and anomaly detection for AI applications, log analysis and observability, and security analytics. The project began in 2021 as a fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana and is available entirely under the Apache 2.0 licence. You run the software yourself, for example with Docker images, tarballs or Linux packages.

Since September 2024 OpenSearch has been governed by the OpenSearch Software Foundation within the Linux Foundation, a US non-profit organisation (501(c)(6)). AWS, SAP and Uber are the founding premier members, and AWS earlier transferred the project to the Linux Foundation. Because the source code is open and you can run the software on your own infrastructure in the EU, you keep control over data and hosting. For managed services offered by third parties, the jurisdiction depends on the provider.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with OpenSearch pre-selected
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Sovereignty score
69 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (self-host, AWS-hosted)
  • 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-665
    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 4, 2026
HeadquartersUS (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionOnly for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingself-host, AWS-hostedVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
CategoryEnterprise Search
TypeProduct
Websiteopensearch.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to OpenSearch

The European alternatives to OpenSearch come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 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

21 European Enterprise Search 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 OpenSearch

OpenSearch 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.

OpenSearch hosts data outside the EU (self-host, AWS-hosted). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

OpenSearch 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 OpenSearch 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 OpenSearch?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to OpenSearch include AddSearch, Cludo and Datafari. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to OpenSearch?

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

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

OpenSearch is headquartered in US and hosts data in self-host, AWS-hosted. 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 Enterprise Search

Enterprise Search: Internal knowledge and document search across company tools, wikis and file stores. 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 OpenSearch — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score