EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorSearch EnginesHeadquarters: GB

Oscobo: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Oscobo is a web search engine that positions itself as privacy-first. It offers a search box, a browser extension and a dedicated browser. According to its own pages, traffic is encrypted in transit, no third-party scripts or analytics are used, searches are not tied to user accounts, and the only personal data it keeps is the IP address, used to determine location and show relevant results and advertisements. It is a consumer service used directly in the browser. At its 2016 launch, press coverage said it licensed its search index from Bing and Yahoo rather than building its own.

Oscobo started in 2016 as a London-based company. Its current privacy policy names Becovi Ltd, with an address in Dublin, Ireland, as the party providing search results. Because results do not come from an index of its own, queries still depend on upstream search providers. A European organisation should read the privacy policy to see what is shared with them and where processing takes place, and treat the privacy claims as the provider's own statements.

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Sovereignty score
52 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • 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 July 2, 2026
HeadquartersGB (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionYes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalOVH - OVH SAS, FR (FR)Technically measured
CategorySearch Engines
TypeProduct
Websiteoscobo.com ↗

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 Oscobo

The European alternatives to Oscobo 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

15 European Search Engines 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 Oscobo

Oscobo 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.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Oscobo scores best on data residency.

Oscobo 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 Oscobo 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 Oscobo?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Oscobo include MetaGer, SearXNG and YaCy. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Oscobo?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Oscobo include MetaGer, SearXNG and YaCy. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Oscobo is headquartered in GB (OTHER) and hosts data in EU. 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 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 Search Engines

Search Engines: Search engines — privacy-friendly web searching. 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 Oscobo — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score