EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceVPNHeadquarters: CA

Psiphon: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Psiphon is a censorship-circumvention tool that routes internet traffic through a network of relay servers, so that users can reach websites and services restricted where they live. It is built for people living under internet censorship and for the organisations that support them. The project began as a research project at the Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto. It is now operated by Psiphon Inc., which describes itself as headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The clients and core tunnelling technology are published as open source.

For a European organisation, jurisdiction and transparency matter most. Psiphon Inc. is a Canadian company, and the pages reviewed name no parent company. They do not say where the relay servers are located, so data location cannot be established from public information alone. The core tunnel code is licensed under the GNU GPL version 3, with exceptions, which allows independent review of the client software. The pages reviewed do not describe a GDPR data processing agreement, so organisations should request one before business use.

Sovereignty score
77 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (CA)
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
  • 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 10, 2026
Headquarters
CA (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Yes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
Type
Product
Website

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Psiphon

The European alternatives to Psiphon 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

21 European VPN 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 Psiphon

Psiphon is headquartered in CA, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

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

Psiphon 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 Psiphon 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 Psiphon?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Psiphon include AdGuard VPN, AirVPN and Avast SecureLine VPN. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Psiphon?

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

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

Psiphon is headquartered in CA (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. 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 10, 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

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".

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

Checked on October 10, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in VPN

VPN: Virtual private network — privacy protection, encrypted connection. 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 Psiphon — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score