EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignStorage & BackupHeadquarters: NO

Piql: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

PIQL AS, based in Drammen, Norway, provides long-term digital archiving on piqlFilm, an optical storage medium that the company describes as immutable and unhackable. Its main service is the Arctic World Archive, a vault in a decommissioned mine on Svalbard where piqlFilm is stored. The company describes the product as Norwegian designed and manufactured. The offer is a hosted archiving service, and no self-hosted or open-source option is described on the pages consulted.

Norway is a member of the European Economic Area but not of the EU. The Arctic World Archive is located on Svalbard, and the mine is owned by Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani (SNSK), which is responsible for its operation, maintenance, security and access control. The cloud component of the archive runs in a Microsoft Azure data centre in Norway, so that layer is operated by a US provider. The pages consulted do not state who owns PIQL, and no GDPR statement was found there. A European organisation should confirm the contractual terms, data residency and ownership before depositing data.

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Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EEA: the GDPR applies directly
  • 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 October 11, 2026
HeadquartersNO (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantNoVendor-stated
CategoryStorage & Backup
TypeProduct
Websitepiql.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Piql

The European alternatives to Piql 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

32 European Storage & Backup 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 Piql

Piql is headquartered in NO, which falls under the GDPR through the European Economic Area. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

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

Piql 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 Piql 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 Piql?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Piql include Acronis, Atempo and Bacula Systems. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Piql?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Piql include Bacula Systems, Bareos and BorgBackup. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Piql is headquartered in NO (EFTA) and hosts data in EU. That makes Piql 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 October 11, 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 Storage & Backup

Storage & Backup: Business storage, backup solutions, object storage and data recovery. 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 Piql — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score