EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignDNS Privacy & FilteringHeadquarters: LU

Restena: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Restena provides a public DNS resolver. It is reachable over DNS over TLS and DNS over HTTPS and validates responses with DNSSEC, which confirms the authenticity of data for domains that have DNSSEC enabled. The resolver is neutral: it does not deliberately alter the information it returns and applies no filtering. For connected institutions, the resolvers also support DNS over QUIC. The service is one of the offerings Restena provides to Luxembourg's research, education, culture, health and administration community.

Fondation Restena is a foundation in Luxembourg with its address in Esch-sur-Alzette; it also manages the registration infrastructure of the .lu domain and the LU-CIX internet exchange. There is no foreign parent company. According to its description, the service keeps the information it collects to the minimum needed to resolve requests, and this data is neither passed on to third parties nor monetised. The page does not state retention periods or the physical location of the resolver servers.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Restena pre-selected
MastodonLinkedInBlueskyXEmail
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 October 5, 2026
HeadquartersLU (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
CategoryDNS Privacy & Filtering
TypeProduct
Websiterestena.lu ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Restena

The European alternatives to Restena 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

24 European DNS Privacy & Filtering vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is Restena 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 Restena

Restena is headquartered in LU 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 Restena scores best on data residency.

Restena 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 Restena 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 Restena?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Restena 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 Restena?

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

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

Restena is headquartered in LU (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Restena 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 5, 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.

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 DNS Privacy & Filtering page — with no effect on your score
8 European alternatives to Restena — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score