EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceGIS & GeospatialHeadquarters: US

PROJ: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

PROJ is an open-source library and command-line tool for converting coordinates. It transforms geospatial coordinates from one reference system to another, covering both map projections and geodetic transformations. Developers embed its API in their own software, and users can run the command-line programs locally. PROJ is not a hosted service.

PROJ is distributed under the X/MIT licence. Its source code is published in the OSGeo organisation on GitHub, and the project is maintained within OSGeo, a not-for-profit organisation in the United States. The project does not operate a cloud service, so no customer data passes through a vendor's infrastructure. For a European organisation, the relevant points are the open licence, the ability to build the library from source, and the release cycle of the distributions it uses.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with PROJ pre-selected
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Sovereignty score
69 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (US)
  • 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-665
    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 12, 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
USVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
GIS & Geospatial
Type
Product
Website
proj.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to PROJ

The European alternatives to PROJ come from our knowledge base of over 7,800 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

57 European GIS & Geospatial 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 PROJ

PROJ 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.

PROJ hosts data outside the EU (US). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

PROJ 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 PROJ 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 PROJ?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to PROJ include 52°North, Airbus Defence & Space and Camptocamp. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to PROJ?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to PROJ include 52°North and Camptocamp. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

PROJ is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 12, 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 GIS & Geospatial

GIS & Geospatial: Geographic information systems, map visualisation and spatial data analysis. 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

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8 European alternatives to PROJ — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score