Non-EU vendorNotes & TasksHeadquarters: US

Standard Notes: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Standard Notes is a note-taking app with sync across devices. It supports Markdown, rich text, code snippets, lists, tasks and secure file storage, and always keeps an offline copy. According to Standard Notes, data is end-to-end encrypted so that only the user holds the keys (zero-knowledge). The source code is public on GitHub and, according to the company, independently audited. The service is delivered as an app with cloud sync and backups.

Since 10 April 2024, Standard Notes has been part of Proton, a Swiss company. Proton has stated that Standard Notes remains an open-source project and a separate product. Ownership therefore sits in Switzerland, which is outside the EU but a member of EFTA. Standard Notes' website does not state in which country synced data is stored. Because the content is end-to-end encrypted, a European organisation should mainly check which metadata the service processes and where it is held.

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

Mastodon LinkedIn Bluesky X Email

Sovereignty score

61 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (US, EU)
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	US (US)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent company	CHVerified 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	US, 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	standardnotes.com ↗

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 Standard Notes

The European alternatives to Standard Notes 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

Is Standard Notes 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 Standard Notes

Standard Notes 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. The ultimate owner is based in CH, also within Europe.

Standard Notes hosts data in US, EU. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Standard Notes 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 Standard Notes 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 Standard Notes?

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

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Standard Notes 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 Standard Notes GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Standard Notes is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, 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.

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 Notes & Tasks page — with no effect on your score