Non-EU vendorMessagingHeadquarters: US

Signal: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Signal is a messaging app for text, voice messages, photos, videos, files and stickers, with voice and video calls and group chats. Messages and calls are end-to-end encrypted using the open-source Signal Protocol; according to Signal, neither the company nor anyone else can read messages or listen to calls. An account is tied to a phone number, and an optional username can help hide that number. Signal says it carries no ads or trackers, and it is offered as an app for mobile and desktop.

Signal is provided by Signal Messenger LLC, a US company wholly owned by the Signal Foundation, a US non-profit organisation (501(c)(3)). The client and server code is open source under AGPL-3.0, apart from anti-spam components. The servers run on major cloud providers, and under its terms encrypted information and metadata may be transferred to the United States and other countries. For a European organisation, the relevant point is that message content is encrypted, while the service provider is subject to US jurisdiction.

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

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Sovereignty score

49 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-30
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 July 2, 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	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	USVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	CLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	Messaging
Type	Product
Website	signal.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 Signal

The European alternatives to Signal 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

21 European Messaging 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 Signal

Signal 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.

Signal 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.

Signal 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 Signal 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 Signal?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Signal include Conversations (XMPP), Delta Chat and Dino. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Signal?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Signal include Conversations (XMPP), Delta Chat, Dino, Olvid, Quicksy, Tox and Wire. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Signal is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. 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 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".

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 Messaging

Messaging: Personal messaging — chat, group conversations, media sharing. 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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