Self-hosted / open sourceVirtualisation & ContainersHeadquarters: AT

Proxmox VE: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) is an open-source server virtualization platform. It combines the KVM hypervisor for full virtual machines with Linux Containers (LXC), and is managed through a web interface, command-line tools and a REST API. It includes clustering with high availability and live migration, software-defined storage and networking (including ZFS and Ceph), a built-in firewall and integrated backup, also with Proxmox Backup Server. Proxmox VE is based on Debian, and you install and operate it yourself on your own hardware.

Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and describes itself as independent, with customers and supporters as its only investors. The software is licensed under the AGPLv3, and the full feature set is available without a subscription; optional subscriptions provide the enterprise repository and support. A Canadian subsidiary handles sales and business-hours support, while core development remains in Vienna. Because you run Proxmox VE on your own infrastructure, you decide where data is stored, which makes it a self-hosted option without a foreign parent company.

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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 July 2, 2026

Headquarters	AT (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	IPAX-AS - IPAX GmbH, AT (AT)Technically measured
Category	Virtualisation & Containers
Type	Product
Website	proxmox.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 Proxmox VE

The European alternatives to Proxmox VE 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

20 European Virtualisation & Containers 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 Proxmox VE

Proxmox VE 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.

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

Proxmox VE 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 Proxmox VE 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 Proxmox VE?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Proxmox VE include APPUiO (VSHN), Gardener and Giant Swarm. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Proxmox VE?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Proxmox VE include Gardener, Giant Swarm, Harvester, IncludeOS, K3s, Kamaji and Kubermatic. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Proxmox VE GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

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

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

Report a vulnerability: pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Security_Reporting
security.txt: proxmox.com/.well-known/security.txt
Supported versions: pve.proxmox.com/wiki/FAQ
Organisation behind the open-source project: Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Virtualisation & Containers

Virtualisation & Containers: Virtualisation platforms, container management, Kubernetes distributions and hypervisors. 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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