Non-EU vendorTranslation & LocalisationHeadquarters: US

Stepes: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Stepes is a provider of translation, localisation and AI language services for businesses. Its platform combines translation technology and automation with translation memory, terminology management, multilingual review, APIs and managed services. Customers can order online and receive an instant quote. A translation API connects workflows to software, websites and apps, and machine translation with post-editing is complemented by professional human review for critical content. Stepes is delivered as a web platform with an API and project services.

Stepes is headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA, so the vendor falls under US jurisdiction. Its security page states that the platform runs on AWS-hosted cloud infrastructure; no hosting region is named. Stepes is not open source. European organisations that have sensitive documents translated should have the hosting location, sub-processors and transfer arrangements confirmed in writing beforehand.

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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 (EU, 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 5, 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	EU, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	Translation & Localisation
Type	Product
Website	stepes.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Stepes

The European alternatives to Stepes 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

39 European Translation & Localisation 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 Stepes

Stepes 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.

Stepes hosts data in EU, 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.

Stepes 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 Stepes 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 Stepes?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Stepes include Acolad, Across Systems and Apertium. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Stepes?

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

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

Stepes is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU, OTHER. 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 5, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

stepes.com/

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 Translation & Localisation

Translation & Localisation: Translation platforms, localisation management and multilingual content tools. 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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