Self-hosted / open sourceAI SecurityHeadquarters: US

PySyft: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

PySyft is an open-source Python framework for privacy-preserving data science. Its idea is that data owners keep their datasets on their own server, while external researchers or data scientists submit code that runs against the private data and receive approved results, without the raw data being handed over. It is used by research institutions and other organisations that need to let third parties analyse sensitive data. PySyft is software that you deploy and operate yourself, and it is released under the Apache 2.0 licence.

PySyft is maintained by OpenMined, a non-profit organisation described as a 501(c)(3) foundation in the United States, with operations in the United States and the United Kingdom. The foundation does not host your data: the server runs on infrastructure that you control, so no vendor hosting region applies. There is no commercial support contract implied by the licence. For a European organisation it is a self-hostable building block for controlled data sharing, with the maintainer's jurisdiction being the main point to note.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with PySyft 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	AI Security
Type	Product
Website	openmined.org ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to PySyft

The European alternatives to PySyft 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

19 European AI Security 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 PySyft

PySyft 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.

PySyft 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.

PySyft 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 PySyft 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 PySyft?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to PySyft include 2021.AI GRACE, CalypsoAI and Giskard. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to PySyft?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to PySyft include Giskard, Invariant Labs and Mistral Shieldstral. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

PySyft 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 AI Security

AI Security: Security for AI/LLM systems — prompt-injection detection, AI red-teaming, agentic security posture management and AI governance guardrails. 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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