EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceMessagingHeadquarters: CH

qaul: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

qaul is an open-source messenger that works without the internet or any other communication infrastructure. Nearby devices find each other automatically over a local wifi network or a phone's shared wifi and form a peer-to-peer mesh network. Users can send public messages to everyone, create group chats and send end-to-end encrypted messages, images and files. Messages for users who are not currently connected can be held and delivered later. qaul is an app that runs on your own devices and is translated into many languages.

qaul is maintained by the qaul developer community, supported by the Swiss association Open Community Projects Association. The source code is available under the AGPL-3.0. Work on configurable communication channels was co-funded through the EU's NGI Zero programme, administered by NLnet. Because messages travel directly between devices, no central cloud service from the maintainer is needed. The current version 2 is published as release candidates.

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Sovereignty score
94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    Hosting in Switzerland only (recognised by the EU as adequate)
  • 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 October 16, 2026
Headquarters
CH (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
CHVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Messaging
Type
Product
Website
qaul.net ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to qaul

The European alternatives to qaul come from our knowledge base of over 9,500 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

36 European Messaging 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 qaul

qaul is headquartered in Switzerland and falls under Swiss law, including the revised Swiss data protection act. Switzerland is not an EU member, but the European Commission recognises its level of data protection as adequate. Its Swiss headquarters does not by itself bring it under US legislation such as the CLOUD Act.

qaul hosts data in Switzerland only. Switzerland is not part of the EU or the EEA, so the GDPR does not apply there directly; the European Commission does recognise Swiss data protection as adequate, so personal data can go there without extra safeguards. Our model therefore scores it between EU hosting and hosting outside Europe. If you require strictly EU hosting, take this into account.

qaul 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 qaul 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 qaul?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to qaul include 360dialog, Balsio and Berty. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to qaul?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to qaul include Berty, Conversations (XMPP), Delta Chat and Dino. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

qaul is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in CH. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes qaul 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 October 16, 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

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in Messaging

Messaging: Personal messaging — chat, group conversations, media sharing. 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 qaul — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score