Self-hosted / open sourcePassword ManagerHeadquarters: BE

Spectre: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Spectre is a password app that does not store passwords. Instead, it calculates the password for a site at the moment you need it, from your full name, a personal Spectre secret and the site's domain name. As a result there is no vault that can leak, be lost or become unreachable. An iOS app is available, and according to the project site the source code and repositories for desktop, macOS, the command line, Android and an API are hosted on GitLab. Spectre succeeds Master Password and is free.

Spectre is open-source software developed by Maarten Billemont; the project site calls the code fully open and auditable, but it does not state the licence or where its author is based. Because no passwords or vault data are stored or synchronised, there is no cloud storage whose location or jurisdiction matters: everything is computed locally. For a European organisation this means little dependence on a vendor. The project does not offer the team management, sharing or recovery features of a conventional password manager.

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

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Sovereignty score

94 / 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-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-6100
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	BE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified 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	Password Manager
Type	Product
Website	spectre.app ↗

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 Spectre

The European alternatives to Spectre 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 Password Manager 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 Spectre

Spectre is headquartered in BE 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 Spectre scores best on data residency.

Spectre 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 Spectre 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 Spectre?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Spectre include AuthPass, Avira Password Manager and Dashlane. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Spectre?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Spectre include AuthPass, gopass, KeePass and KeePassXC. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Spectre is headquartered in BE (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Spectre 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 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

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

We found none of these signals on the vendor's own site when we checked.

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Password Manager

Password Manager: Password vault — generate, store and autofill passwords. 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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