EU sovereignDesignHeadquarters: CZ

Photopea: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Photopea is a free image editor for raster and vector graphics that runs entirely in the web browser. It opens and saves PSD files, among other formats, and also handles PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF, AI, Figma and RAW files. Designers, developers and private users employ it for photo retouching, illustration and web design without installing anything. According to the vendor, editing happens on your own device and files are not uploaded.

Photopea was created by Ivan Kutskir, who lives and works in Prague, Czech Republic. It is delivered as a web service and is not open source. Under its privacy policy, opened files never leave your device; only when you sign in are details such as your name, email address and preferences stored on Photopea's server, and cloud storage runs directly between your device and your own cloud provider. For a European organisation this means file contents stay local, while account data sits with a Czech-based provider.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Photopea pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

71 / 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-360
Key management with a European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
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

Headquarters	CZ (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	MASTER-AS - MasterDC s.r.o., CZ (IT)Technically measured
Category	Design
Type	Product
Website	photopea.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 Photopea

The European alternatives to Photopea 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

32 European Design 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 Photopea

Photopea is headquartered in CZ 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 Photopea scores best on data residency.

Photopea 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 Photopea 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 Photopea?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Photopea include ArtFlow, Artweaver and Capture One. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Photopea?

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

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

Photopea is headquartered in CZ (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Photopea 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".

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 Design

Design: Graphic design — photo editing, illustration, desktop publishing. 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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