EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceMessagingHeadquarters: CH

Status: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Status is an open-source messenger and wallet app developed by Status Research & Development GmbH. It offers private chats, group communities and wallet functions over a peer-to-peer network. The vendor describes it as a community project whose source code anyone can build, contribute to and fork. The app is installed on users' own devices, and communities are run by the members who operate the desktop app.

The company is a Swiss company with its registered office in Zug, Switzerland, so the operator sits outside the EU. The source code of the desktop client is published under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, which allows a European organisation to examine and adapt the software. Because the network is peer-to-peer and the vendor states that nobody controls it, the sovereignty question centres on the software and its governance rather than on a hosting contract.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Status pre-selected
Sovereignty score
94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    Hosting in Switzerland only (recognised by the EU as adequate)
  • 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 October 11, 2026
HeadquartersCH (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingCHVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
CategoryMessaging
TypeProduct
Websitestatus.app ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Status

The European alternatives to Status come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 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

21 European Messaging 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 Status

Status is headquartered in Switzerland and falls under Swiss law, including the revised Swiss data protection act. Switzerland is not an EU member, but the European Commission recognises its level of data protection as adequate. Its Swiss headquarters does not by itself bring it under US legislation such as the CLOUD Act.

Status hosts data in Switzerland only. Switzerland is not part of the EU or the EEA, so the GDPR does not apply there directly; the European Commission does recognise Swiss data protection as adequate, so personal data can go there without extra safeguards. Our model therefore scores it between EU hosting and hosting outside Europe. If you require strictly EU hosting, take this into account.

Status 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 Status 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 Status?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Status include Balsio, Berty and Conversations (XMPP). On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Status?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Status include Berty, Conversations (XMPP), Delta Chat, Dino and Gajim. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Status is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in CH. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Status 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 October 11, 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 Messaging

Messaging: Personal messaging — chat, group conversations, media sharing. 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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8 European alternatives to Status — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score