EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceDNS Privacy & FilteringHeadquarters: US

Pi-hole: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Pi-hole is open-source software that blocks advertisements and trackers for an entire network through DNS. It acts as the DNS server of your network and refuses requests for domains on blocklists, so every device behind it is covered without installing software on each one. Pi-hole includes a web interface, a REST API, device groups, allow and deny lists and a query log, and it can also serve as a DHCP server. You install it yourself on a Raspberry Pi, an old PC, a virtual machine or in a Docker container.

Pi-hole is developed by Pi-hole, LLC, a company in the United States, and is published under the European Union Public Licence according to Wikipedia. Because you run the software on your own hardware, DNS queries stay inside your own network unless you choose an external upstream DNS provider. That leaves you in control of where this data goes and which jurisdiction applies to it.

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Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • 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-675
    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 9, 2026
Headquarters
US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal
WEBHOSTINGHOLDINGS - Webhosting Holdings LLC, US (US)Technically measured
Category
DNS Privacy & Filtering
Type
Product
Website
pi-hole.net ↗

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 Pi-hole

The European alternatives to Pi-hole 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

24 European DNS Privacy & Filtering 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 Pi-hole

Pi-hole is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Pi-hole scores best on data residency.

Pi-hole 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 Pi-hole 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 Pi-hole?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Pi-hole include AdGuard DNS, AdGuard Home and Blocky. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Pi-hole?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Pi-hole include AdGuard Home, Blocky and dnscrypt-proxy. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Pi-hole GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Pi-hole is headquartered in US 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 October 9, 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 DNS Privacy & Filtering

DNS Privacy & Filtering: Privacy-friendly DNS services, ad blocking and DNS filtering. 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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8 European alternatives to Pi-hole — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score