EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignCloud IaaSHeadquarters: CH

stepping stone: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

stepping stone is a Swiss cloud provider offering virtual servers, GPU servers, managed Kubernetes, networking, block storage, S3 object storage and backup. The service, which the company calls stoney cloud, is built on OpenStack and Ceph. stepping stone also provides managed databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB), open-source AI models as a managed service, development tools, password and backup solutions and collaboration tools, plus managed operations and onboarding support. It addresses Swiss SMEs, software companies, public bodies and regulated sectors.

stepping stone Ltd is based in Bern, Switzerland, and has operated since 2004 according to its website. According to the company, the infrastructure runs in two separate Swiss data centres in the canton of Fribourg, and it describes the service as independent of US providers. A data processing agreement on the website refers to the Swiss data protection act (DSG) and the EU GDPR. Switzerland is not in the EU but is an EFTA country with an EU adequacy decision. The website names no owner outside Switzerland.

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Sovereignty score
67 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
  • Data residency SOV-380
    Hosting in Switzerland only (recognised by the EU as adequate)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
    Key management with a European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
    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 14, 2026
Headquarters
CH (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
CHVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Cloud IaaS
Type
Product
Website
stepping-stone.ch ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to stepping stone

The European alternatives to stepping stone come from our knowledge base of over 9,200 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

101 European Cloud IaaS 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 stepping stone

stepping stone 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.

stepping stone 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.

stepping stone 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 stepping stone 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 stepping stone?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to stepping stone include 1984 Hosting, acens and Aiven. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to stepping stone?

Our list of EU alternatives to stepping stone is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is stepping stone GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

stepping stone is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in CH. That makes stepping stone 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 14, 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

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in Cloud IaaS

Cloud IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service — virtual machines, storage, networking. 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 stepping stone — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score