EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorForms & SurveysHeadquarters: US

Qualtrics: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Qualtrics is a commercial platform for experience management (XM) and surveys. Organisations use it to collect and analyse feedback from customers, employees and markets, with features such as text analytics of open answers, benchmarks and AI functions. According to Qualtrics, governments and healthcare organisations also run their programmes on the platform. It is delivered as subscription-based, cloud-hosted SaaS.

Qualtrics has co-headquarters in Seattle, Washington, and Provo, Utah. Since 2023 it has been privately held, owned by Silver Lake, CPP Investment Board and co-founder Ryan Smith; before that it belonged to SAP. As a US company, Qualtrics is subject to US law, which is relevant to CLOUD Act exposure. Qualtrics states that it runs applications in AWS regions across the US, Europe, Asia Pacific and Japan; the region used for your environment should be confirmed with Qualtrics. The platform is not open source. European organisations processing survey data should fix the region and processor terms contractually.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Qualtrics pre-selected
MastodonLinkedInBlueskyXEmail
Sovereignty score
27 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-350
    Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US, OTHER)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
    Key management with a non-European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-615
    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
HeadquartersUS (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionOnly for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEU, US, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantNoVendor-stated
Hosting signalAKAMAI-AS - Akamai Technologies, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryForms & Surveys
TypeProduct
Websitequaltrics.com ↗

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 Qualtrics

The European alternatives to Qualtrics 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

41 European Forms & Surveys vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is Qualtrics one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with Qualtrics

Qualtrics 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.

Qualtrics 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.

Qualtrics 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 Qualtrics 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 Qualtrics?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Qualtrics include LamaPoll, Survio and Formbricks. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Qualtrics?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Qualtrics include Formbricks, LimeSurvey (self-host), CryptPad Forms, Framaforms, Nextcloud Forms and OpnForm. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Qualtrics is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU, US, 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 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".

CSA STARConfirmed in registry

Digital sovereignty in Forms & Surveys

Forms & Surveys: Online forms, surveys and feedback tools. 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

See all →
Open in the alternatives dashboardMissing a vendor? Submit itAre you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Forms & Surveys page — with no effect on your score
8 European alternatives to Qualtrics — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score