EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignCloud Storage (Personal)Headquarters: DE

STRATO HiDrive: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

HiDrive is a cloud storage service from STRATO for private users and businesses. It makes automatic backups with configurable retention and frequency, and offers shared links with passwords or expiry dates, upload folders for third parties, team folders and a virus scan for files up to 250 MB. Device backup and end-to-end (zero-knowledge) encryption are available as options, and two-factor authentication is offered. Besides the free app and web access, HiDrive supports protocols such as SFTP, WebDAV, SMB, rsync, SCP and Git, and offers an API.

STRATO GmbH is based in Berlin and belongs to the United Internet AG group. According to STRATO, the service runs in two high-security data centres in Germany that are ISO 27001 certified, so the data is subject to the German implementation of EU data protection law. HiDrive is a service hosted by STRATO; it is not offered for self-hosting. For a European organisation, this means a German provider and storage in Germany. If you want to control the keys yourself, you need to enable the optional end-to-end encryption.

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Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • 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 July 2, 2026
Headquarters
DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal
STRATO - Strato GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
Category
Cloud Storage (Personal)
Type
Product
Website
strato.de ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to STRATO HiDrive

The European alternatives to STRATO HiDrive 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

22 European Cloud Storage (Personal) 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 STRATO HiDrive

STRATO HiDrive is headquartered in DE and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so STRATO HiDrive scores best on data residency.

STRATO HiDrive 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 STRATO HiDrive 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 STRATO HiDrive?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to STRATO HiDrive include CloudMe, Cozy Cloud and Cryptee. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to STRATO HiDrive?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to STRATO HiDrive include Cozy Cloud, Cryptee, Filen and Internxt. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is STRATO HiDrive GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

STRATO HiDrive is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes STRATO HiDrive 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 July 2, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice during the full audit of June and July 2026. Source links have been recorded per record since 20 September 2026.

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 Cloud Storage (Personal)

Cloud Storage (Personal): Personal cloud storage — sync and share files. 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 STRATO HiDrive — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score