Self-hosted / open sourceMessagingHeadquarters: GB

Stoat: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Stoat, known as Revolt until October 2025, is an open-source chat app for friends and communities. It offers servers with channels, voice chat, file sharing and Markdown, plus role-based permissions, moderation tools, bots and a public API. Group DMs support up to 50 members. Stoat runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and in the browser. You can use the hosted service at stoat.chat or host your own server.

Stoat is developed by Revolt Platforms Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales with an office in London, so in the United Kingdom. According to the privacy policy, data is primarily stored on servers of cloud providers within the EU. Some data, such as encrypted backups, may be held in the UK, and real-time voice and video may be processed in other countries. Cloudflare provides DDoS protection and content delivery. According to Wikipedia, the code is released under the AGPL-3.0. Self-hosting is an option for European organisations.

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Sovereignty score

79 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
Data residency SOV-3100
Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, OTHER)
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 October 5, 2026

Headquarters	GB (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Yes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	EU, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	Messaging
Type	Product
Website	stoat.chat ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Stoat

The European alternatives to Stoat 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

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 Stoat

Stoat is headquartered in GB, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

Stoat 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.

Stoat 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 Stoat 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 Stoat?

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

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

Stoat is headquartered in GB (OTHER) 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.

stoat.chat/

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.

Also in this category

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