Self-hosted / open sourceCDN, DNS & DomainsHeadquarters: NL

PowerDNS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

PowerDNS provides open-source DNS software aimed at large-scale DNS providers, such as mobile and broadband operators and hosting and cloud providers. The suite consists of the Authoritative Server, which serves zones from a range of backends such as MySQL, PostgreSQL or BIND files, the Recursor as a recursive resolver, and dnsdist, a DNS proxy and load balancer with caching and encryption (DoT, DoH). The company also sells commercial extensions, support, consultancy, implementation and migration services. PowerDNS is self-managed software that you install and run yourself.

PowerDNS.com B.V. is based in The Hague and, according to SIDN, is part of Open-Xchange. The open-source software is released under the GPLv2 licence, so the code can be inspected. Because you run the software on your own infrastructure, you decide where zone data and DNS traffic are processed. For a European organisation that wants to operate its DNS infrastructure itself, this is a Dutch product with no mandatory hosted component; commercial support comes directly from the PowerDNS team.

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

Mastodon LinkedIn Bluesky X Email

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
Hosting signal	CLOUDFLARESPECTRUM - Cloudflare London, LLC, US (US)Technically measured
Category	CDN, DNS & Domains
Type	Product
Website	powerdns.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 PowerDNS

The European alternatives to PowerDNS 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

14 European CDN, DNS & Domains vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is PowerDNS one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with PowerDNS

PowerDNS 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 PowerDNS scores best on data residency.

PowerDNS 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 PowerDNS 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 PowerDNS?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to PowerDNS include Bunny.net, ClouDNS and deSEC. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to PowerDNS?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to PowerDNS include deSEC, Knot DNS and Knot Resolver. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

PowerDNS is headquartered in NL (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes PowerDNS 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 CDN, DNS & Domains

CDN, DNS & Domains: Content delivery networks, DNS services and domain registration. 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.

Also in this category

See all →

Open in the alternatives dashboard Missing a vendor? Submit it Are you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the CDN, DNS & Domains page — with no effect on your score