Self-hosted / open sourceGIS & GeospatialHeadquarters: CH

QGIS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

QGIS is a free and open source geographic information system for creating maps, editing layers and analysing spatial data. It offers cartographic design with a layout designer for print maps, atlases and reports, digitising of points, lines, polygons and meshes, a broad analysis toolset with visual workflow building, and support for many data sources and formats and standards-based web services. QGIS runs as desktop software on Windows, macOS and Linux and can publish to the cloud and to mobile devices.

QGIS is licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or later and is owned by its contributors, not by a company. The project is organised through QGIS.ORG, a Swiss association with its registered address in Laax, governed by a three-member board and a six-member Project Steering Committee. Switzerland belongs to EFTA, not the EU. QGIS.ORG is a partner of OSGeo. Because QGIS is installed locally, data stays on your own systems unless you choose to connect to external services. No vendor needs to process your data.

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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
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	CH (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	HETZNER-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
Category	GIS & Geospatial
Type	Product
Website	qgis.org ↗

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 QGIS

The European alternatives to QGIS 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

45 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 QGIS

QGIS 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.

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

QGIS 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 QGIS 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 QGIS?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to QGIS 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 QGIS?

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

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

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

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.

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