EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignCloud IaaSHeadquarters: CH

SWITCH Cloud: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

SWITCH Cloud is an infrastructure-as-a-service offering from SWITCH, a non-profit Swiss foundation established in 1987. It provides compute, block storage, Kubernetes, S3 storage and managed PostgreSQL, complemented by cloud software such as Drive and Backup. The service is tailored to the Swiss education, research and innovation system and is fully controlled by SWITCH. It is positioned as a complement to existing systems, particularly for applications that handle highly sensitive data.

SWITCH states that the cloud runs redundantly in two data centres in Switzerland and that data stays in Switzerland at all times. The foundation belongs to the universities and acts independently of commercial interests, so no foreign parent company is apparent. For a European organisation the service is mainly relevant to Swiss research and education, not a general commercial offer. Switzerland is not an EU member state, which should be taken into account in contracts.

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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 10, 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
NoVendor-stated
Category
Cloud IaaS
Type
Product
Website
switch.ch ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to SWITCH Cloud

The European alternatives to SWITCH Cloud 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

84 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 SWITCH Cloud

SWITCH Cloud 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.

SWITCH Cloud 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.

SWITCH Cloud 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 SWITCH Cloud 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 SWITCH Cloud?

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

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

Is SWITCH Cloud GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

SWITCH Cloud is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in CH. That makes SWITCH Cloud 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 10, 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 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.

Also in this category

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8 European alternatives to SWITCH Cloud — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score