Non-EU vendorNotes & TasksHeadquarters: CN

SiYuan: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

SiYuan is a note-taking and personal knowledge management application that describes itself as open source, local-first and privacy-first. Content is organised in blocks that can be referenced and linked in both directions, with a global link graph, databases with relations and rollups, spaced-repetition flashcards and Markdown support. It is used as a desktop or mobile app with data stored on the user's own device, or deployed on a server through a Docker image for browser access and collaboration.

SiYuan is developed by B3log; the website credits Yunnan Liandi Technology Co., Ltd., which points to a developer based in China. The source code is published on GitHub under the AGPL-3.0 licence, and most features are free to use. Notes live in a workspace folder you control, so organisations can keep data on their own infrastructure in the EU by running the app locally or hosting the Docker image themselves.

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

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Sovereignty score

79 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (CN)
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 July 2, 2026

Headquarters	CN (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	No — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	CLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	Notes & Tasks
Type	Product
Website	b3log.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 SiYuan

The European alternatives to SiYuan 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 SiYuan

SiYuan is headquartered in CN, 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 SiYuan scores best on data residency.

SiYuan 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 SiYuan 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 SiYuan?

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

Are there open-source alternatives to SiYuan?

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

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

SiYuan is headquartered in CN (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 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 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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