EU sovereignDNS Privacy & FilteringHeadquarters: CH

Quad9: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Quad9 is a public recursive DNS service that blocks domains associated with malware and phishing. Each lookup is checked against lists from more than twenty threat-intelligence partners, and malicious domains are not resolved. The service is reachable at 9.9.9.9 and 149.112.112.112 and supports DNS over TLS, DNS over HTTPS and DNSCrypt, with DNSSEC validation. You configure it on a device, router or network, with no account and no infrastructure of your own.

Quad9 is run by a Swiss foundation with an address in Zürich, and its data protection authority is the Swiss FDPIC. Switzerland is not an EU member state but is part of EFTA. According to its privacy policy, Quad9 does not record user IP addresses and keeps only aggregated counters. The service runs on anycast from hundreds of locations across many countries, so a query may be answered outside Europe. No foreign parent company is stated; the founding organisations include the Global Cyber Alliance, IBM and PCH.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Quad9 pre-selected

Sovereignty score

59 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US, OTHER)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
Key management with a European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-645
Closed source, runtime with the vendor

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 9, 2026

Headquarters	CH (EU)	Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)	Verified by hand
Data hosting	EU, US, OTHER	Verified by hand
Open-source	No	Verified by hand
GDPR-compliant	Yes	Vendor-stated
Hosting signal	Switch - SWITCH, CH (CH)	Technically measured
Category	DNS Privacy & Filtering
Type	Product
Website	quad9.net ↗

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 Quad9

The European alternatives to Quad9 come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 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

24 European DNS Privacy & Filtering 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 Quad9

Quad9 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.

Quad9 hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Quad9 is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Quad9 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 Quad9?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Quad9 include AdGuard DNS, AdGuard Home and Blocky. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Quad9?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Quad9 include AdGuard Home and Blocky. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Quad9 GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Quad9 is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. That makes Quad9 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 9, 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 DNS Privacy & Filtering

DNS Privacy & Filtering: Privacy-friendly DNS services, ad blocking and DNS filtering. 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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