Self-hosted / open sourcePersonal Backup & SyncHeadquarters: GB

rclone: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

rclone is a command-line program, written in Go, for managing files in cloud storage. It provides cloud versions of familiar Unix commands such as rsync, cp, mv and ls. Organisations and individuals use it to back up and restore files, mirror data, migrate between providers or mount cloud storage as a disk. It can also share files over protocols including SFTP, HTTP, WebDAV and FTP. It is installed and run on your own systems; no separate hosted service from its authors is needed.

rclone is free software under the MIT licence, with Nick Craig-Wood as author and copyright holder. Because the program runs locally, the storage service you configure yourself determines where your data ends up and which jurisdiction applies to it. A European provider or your own infrastructure is therefore a possible target. The crypt feature lets you encrypt files before they are stored with an external storage service. For a European organisation, rclone is a neutral link between its own systems and the storage of its choice.

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

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Sovereignty score

79 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
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-675
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 9, 2026

Headquarters	GB (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Yes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified 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	Personal Backup & Sync
Type	Product
Website	rclone.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 rclone

The European alternatives to rclone 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

19 European Personal Backup & Sync 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 rclone

rclone is headquartered in GB, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

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

rclone 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 rclone 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 rclone?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to rclone include BorgBackup, FreeFileSync and Pika Backup. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to rclone?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to rclone include BorgBackup, FreeFileSync, Pika Backup, Restic, Syncthing and Vorta. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

rclone is headquartered in GB (OTHER) and hosts data in EU. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. 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".

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 Personal Backup & Sync

Personal Backup & Sync: Personal backup tools, file synchronisation and data recovery. 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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