Self-hosted / open sourceBrowserHeadquarters: NL

Pale Moon: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Pale Moon is a web browser for Windows, macOS and Linux that runs on Goanna, its own rendering engine built on the UXP platform (a fork of the Mozilla codebase). The browser emphasises customisability: full theming, XUL-based add-ons and support for legacy NPAPI plugins. Pale Moon uses a single process, shows no ads and, according to its makers, collects no telemetry; DuckDuckGo is the default search engine.

The source code is licensed under MPL-2.0; the official binaries are freeware unless the branding is removed. Moonchild Productions holds the copyright, and the project is developed by a small team spread around the world. No foreign parent company is known. According to its privacy policy, the project's websites and forums may be served through content delivery networks such as Cloudflare, and geolocation lookups send data to IP-API.com. Because the browser runs locally, your browsing data stays on your own device by default.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Pale Moon 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	NL (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified 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	HETZNER-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
Category	Browser
Type	Product
Website	palemoon.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 Pale Moon

The European alternatives to Pale Moon 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

18 European Browser 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 Pale Moon

Pale Moon is headquartered in NL 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 Pale Moon scores best on data residency.

Pale Moon 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 Pale Moon 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 Pale Moon?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Pale Moon include Ecosia Browser, Falkon and Iridium Browser. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Pale Moon?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Pale Moon include Falkon, Iridium Browser, Konqueror, LibreWolf, Midori, Mullvad Browser and Nyxt. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Pale Moon GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Pale Moon is headquartered in NL (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Pale Moon 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: palemoon.org/policies/privacy.shtml

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

Report a vulnerability: palemoon.org/policies/secdis.shtml
security.txt: palemoon.org/.well-known/security.txt

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Browser

Browser: Web browser — browsing, privacy, extensions, sync. 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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