EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignSearch EnginesHeadquarters: FR

Qwant: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Qwant is a web search engine for consumers, available through its website, browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, and mobile apps. According to the vendor, it does not store search history by default and does not store or sell personal data. Its web results have historically come from Microsoft Bing, and Qwant is building its own index together with Ecosia in the joint venture European Search Perspective.

Qwant is headquartered in Paris, France. It is owned by Synfonium, a holding company linked to Octave Klaba, together with the Caisse des dépôts, so there is no US parent. Its privacy policy names Microsoft as a partner for search results and advertising and states that certain data shared with Microsoft is transmitted within the European Union. The policy does not say where Qwant hosts its own infrastructure, so organisations with strict residency requirements should ask the vendor.

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Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • 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-655
    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 July 2, 2026
Headquarters
FR (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents
1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal
OVH - OVH SAS, FR (FR)Technically measured
Category
Search Engines
Type
Product
Website
qwant.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 Qwant

The European alternatives to Qwant 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

15 European Search Engines 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 Qwant

Qwant is headquartered in FR and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

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

Qwant 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 Qwant 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 Qwant?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Qwant include Ecosia, Lilo and MetaGer. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Qwant?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Qwant include MetaGer and SearXNG. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Qwant is headquartered in FR (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Qwant 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".

Data Processing Agreement (DPA)
about.qwant.com/en/legal/confidentialite/

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Search Engines

Search Engines: Search engines — privacy-friendly web searching. 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 Qwant — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score