EU sovereignDomain Name RegistrarsHeadquarters: NL

SIDN: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

SIDN is the Arnhem-based foundation that operates the registry for the .nl country-code domain. It manages .nl domain names and their registration data together with accredited registrars, and it runs the .nl zone and its DNS. SIDN also provides technical and legal support to other top-level domains. The service is delivered as a registry through registrars and online tools, not as software that organisations install.

SIDN is a foundation under Dutch law with its registered office in Arnhem. Its constitution sets out a non-commercial structure in which any surplus on liquidation must go to purposes close to its objectives, so it has no shareholders and no foreign parent. Its privacy policy states that SIDN follows the GDPR, but it does not say where registrant data is stored. European organisations can therefore treat SIDN as a Dutch and EU-based registry, and may wish to confirm hosting details directly with SIDN.

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

Mastodon LinkedIn Bluesky X Email

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 11, 2026

Headquarters	NL (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
Category	Domain Name Registrars
Type	Product
Website	sidn.nl ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to SIDN

The European alternatives to SIDN 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

35 European Domain Name Registrars vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is SIDN 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 SIDN

SIDN is headquartered in NL 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 SIDN scores best on data residency.

SIDN 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 SIDN 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 SIDN?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to SIDN include 101domain, Afnic and Aruba Domains. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to SIDN?

Our list of EU alternatives to SIDN is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

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

SIDN is headquartered in NL (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes SIDN 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 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 Domain Name Registrars

Domain Name Registrars: Companies that register and manage internet domain names. 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 dashboard Missing a vendor? Submit it Are you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Domain Name Registrars page — with no effect on your score