Self-hosted / open sourceDNS Privacy & FilteringHeadquarters: CN

SmartDNS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

SmartDNS is a local DNS server that you host yourself. It receives DNS queries from devices on the network, forwards them to several upstream DNS servers, measures which returned IP address is fastest to reach and gives that address to the client. Upstream connections can use UDP, TCP, DNS over TLS, DNS over HTTPS, DNS over QUIC and DoH3, including through SOCKS5 or HTTP proxies. SmartDNS also offers caching, IPv4/IPv6, DNS64, domain filters for advertisements and malicious sites, and separate rules per client by MAC or IP address. It runs on Linux, OpenWrt, ASUS routers and Windows via WSL.

SmartDNS is free software under GPL-3.0, developed by Nick Peng, who publishes as the GitHub user pymumu. No company or parent organisation is involved, and the project pages state no country of establishment. Because you run the software yourself, you decide where processing takes place; which jurisdiction applies to your DNS traffic depends on the upstream resolvers you configure.

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Sovereignty score

77 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (CN)
Data residency SOV-3100
No hosting in Europe (self-hosted)
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 6, 2026

Headquarters	CN (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	No — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Data hosting	Self-hosted, e.g. in self-hosted (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	DNS Privacy & Filtering
Type	Product
Website	github.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to SmartDNS

The European alternatives to SmartDNS 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

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Why digital sovereignty matters with SmartDNS

SmartDNS 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.

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

SmartDNS 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 SmartDNS 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 SmartDNS?

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

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

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

SmartDNS is headquartered in CN (OTHER) and hosts data in self-hosted. 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 October 6, 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.

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