Non-EU vendorData Platform & WarehouseHeadquarters: US

Starburst: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Starburst is a data analytics platform built on Trino, the open-source distributed SQL query engine. It lets organisations query data where it lives, federated across many sources, without first centralising it, and adds performance acceleration, security features and support on top of Trino. It comes in two forms: Starburst Galaxy, a fully managed SaaS service on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure, and Starburst Enterprise, a self-managed distribution for private cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments.

Starburst is a US company based in Boston, and the creators of Trino are part of its team. As a US vendor it falls under US jurisdiction, including the CLOUD Act. Galaxy offers regions such as Frankfurt, Zurich and Ireland on AWS alongside US and Asia-Pacific regions, so processing in Europe is possible. With Starburst Enterprise you operate the software yourself, which Starburst positions for organisations that need control over data residency. The Trino engine underneath is open source under the Apache 2.0 licence.

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Sovereignty score

27 / 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, CH, OTHER)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
Key management with a non-European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-615
Closed source, runtime with the vendor

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 9, 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	US, EU, CH, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	Data Platform & Warehouse
Type	Product
Website	starburst.io ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Starburst

The European alternatives to Starburst 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

12 European Data Platform & Warehouse 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 Starburst

Starburst 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.

Starburst hosts data in US, EU, CH, OTHER. 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.

Starburst is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Starburst 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 Starburst?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Starburst include DuckDB, Exasol and Falkor. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Starburst?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Starburst include DuckDB, Garage and MonetDB. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Starburst is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU, CH, OTHER. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 9, 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 Data Platform & Warehouse

Data Platform & Warehouse: Lakehouses, cloud data warehouses, data-lake storage and analytical databases for enterprise-wide analysis. 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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