EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorGIS & GeospatialHeadquarters: GB

Ordnance Survey: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Ordnance Survey is the national mapping agency of Great Britain and operates as Ordnance Survey Limited from Southampton. It maintains a national topographic dataset, The National Map, and offers mapping products through OS Maps and an online shop. A data discovery page covering data, products and APIs also addresses developers, who can use the data through those channels.

The organisation is headquartered in Southampton, United Kingdom. As a UK company, Ordnance Survey falls outside EU jurisdiction, so a European organisation that uses its data or services relies on a non-EU supplier with a UK legal basis for processing. The website does not state where hosting takes place, and the datasets are not open-source software. For European buyers, the relevant questions are the licence terms and where any customer data is processed; national mapping agencies within the EU are an alternative that stays within the European legal framework.

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Sovereignty score
32 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
  • Data residency SOV-30
    No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-340
    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-630
    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 10, 2026
Headquarters
GB (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Yes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
GIS & Geospatial
Type
Product
Website
ordnancesurvey.co.uk ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Ordnance Survey

The European alternatives to Ordnance Survey 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 Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey is headquartered in GB, 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.

Ordnance Survey 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.

Ordnance Survey 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 Ordnance Survey 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 Ordnance Survey?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Ordnance Survey 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 Ordnance Survey?

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

Is Ordnance Survey GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Ordnance Survey is headquartered in GB (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 10, 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 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 Ordnance Survey — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score