EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceRemote Desktop & SupportHeadquarters: CA

OpenSSH: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

OpenSSH is a remote-login tool that uses the SSH protocol and encrypts the traffic. It offers tunnelling, several authentication methods and extensive configuration options. Administrators and developers use it to manage servers and to reach remote machines over untrusted networks. OpenSSH is developed as part of OpenBSD, and a separate portable release makes it available for other operating systems. You install and run it yourself on your own systems.

OpenSSH is developed by a small group of developers from the OpenBSD Project, and the portable version is maintained by a separate portability team. Donations go to the OpenBSD Foundation, a Canadian not-for-profit corporation. The licence is BSD-style, and the project states that OpenSSH contains no GPL code. It is free software that you can audit and run on your own machines, and the project describes no hosted service. Early development was carried out by developers in Canada, Germany and the United States.

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Sovereignty score
77 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (CA)
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
  • 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 14, 2026
Headquarters
CA (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Yes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Remote Desktop & Support
Type
Product
Website
openssh.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to OpenSSH

The European alternatives to OpenSSH come from our knowledge base of over 8,400 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

22 European Remote Desktop & Support 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 OpenSSH

OpenSSH is headquartered in CA, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

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

OpenSSH 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 OpenSSH 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 OpenSSH?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to OpenSSH include AnyDesk, DWService and FastViewer. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to OpenSSH?

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

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

OpenSSH is headquartered in CA (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. 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 14, 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

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in Remote Desktop & Support

Remote Desktop & Support: Remote access, remote support and screen sharing. 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 OpenSSH — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score