Self-hosted / open sourceDNS Privacy & FilteringHeadquarters: AT

Portmaster: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Portmaster is an open-source application firewall for Windows and Linux. The software runs on the user's own computer, shows which programmes connect to which servers, and blocks advertising and tracking domains at DNS level for all applications. Users can add custom rules and block individual domains. Packages are available for Windows, Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora. The company also offers the SPN privacy network, which is managed through an account.

Portmaster is developed by Safing ICS Technologies GmbH, which is based in Austria. In December 2024 IVPN Limited, registered in Gibraltar, acquired the company, and IVPN has since operated Portmaster and the SPN network. The source code is publicly available under the GPL-3.0 licence, and because the software runs locally, organisations can deploy it themselves. For a European organisation, the main question concerns the jurisdiction of the account and SPN services, as the vendor does not publicly state where those services are hosted.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Portmaster 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 October 11, 2026

Headquarters	AT (EU)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent company	GIVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	DNS Privacy & Filtering
Type	Product
Website	safing.io ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Portmaster

The European alternatives to Portmaster 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 Portmaster

Portmaster is headquartered in AT and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data. The ultimate owner is based in GI. Foreign control undermines part of the certainty a European headquarters offers.

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

Portmaster 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 Portmaster 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 Portmaster?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Portmaster 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 Portmaster?

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

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

Portmaster is headquartered in AT (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Portmaster 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 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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