Self-hosted / open sourceNotes & TasksHeadquarters: US

Reflect: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Reflect is an open-source note-taking app for Mac and iPhone. Notes are stored as plain Markdown files in a folder of your choice. The app offers daily notes, wiki links, local search and browser capture, and notes can be synchronised through iCloud Drive or Git. No Reflect account is required. Optional AI features work with the user's own API key.

Reflect is made by Reflect App, LLC in Austin, Texas (United States). The source code is published under the MIT licence on GitHub, so the app can be inspected and run independently. Because notes stay on the device by default, your organisation decides where the files live and which synchronisation service is used. According to the privacy policy, note contents are end-to-end encrypted, and OpenAI and Anthropic receive only the text a user selects for AI features. The policy names no hosting region for company-side data. Anyone using the AI features sends text to the chosen provider, which is typically based in the United States.

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

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Sovereignty score

69 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-3100
No hosting in Europe (US)
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-665
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 11, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	USVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	Notes & Tasks
Type	Product
Website	reflect.app ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Reflect

The European alternatives to Reflect 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

25 European Notes & Tasks 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 Reflect

Reflect 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.

Reflect hosts data outside the EU (US). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

Reflect 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 Reflect 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 Reflect?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Reflect include Anytype, Bear and Capacities. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Reflect?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Reflect include Carnet, CryptPad, HedgeDoc and Joplin. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Reflect is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. 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 11, 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 Notes & Tasks

Notes & Tasks: Note-taking apps and task management — write, organise, sync. 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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