Self-hosted / open sourceCloud Storage (Personal)Headquarters: TW

Synology Drive (on-prem): sovereignty score and 7 European alternatives

Synology Drive is a private cloud for file management and sharing. It runs on a Synology NAS and is installed from the DSM Package Center. Users sync and back up files between the NAS, desktops and mobile devices, co-edit Microsoft and OpenDocument files through Synology Office, and share links with role-based permissions. Administrators deploy clients through Windows AD and Group Policy, monitor activity in a central console, and can block downloads, apply watermarks and remotely wipe synced files. Clients exist for Windows, macOS, Ubuntu, iOS, iPadOS and Android. The package itself is licence-free.

Synology Inc. is a privately held Taiwanese company headquartered in Banqiao, New Taipei. Because Synology Drive runs on a NAS the organisation owns, files sit on hardware it manages, in a location of its choosing, for example within the EU. The software is not open source. For a European organisation, the dependency therefore lies mainly with the hardware and software supplier and with its own administration capacity, rather than with an external cloud service.

See the 7 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Synology Drive (on-prem) pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

65 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (TW)
Data residency SOV-3100
EU-only hosting
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-380
Closed source, but self-hostable: encryption keys and runtime under your own control
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
Closed source, but self-hostable on your own infrastructure

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	TW (OTHER)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent company	TWVerified by hand
EU adequacy decision	No — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Data hosting	Self-hosted, e.g. in EU (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	AMAZON-02 - Amazon.com, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	Cloud Storage (Personal)
Type	Product
Website	synology.com ↗

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 Synology Drive (on-prem)

The European alternatives to Synology Drive (on-prem) 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 Synology Drive (on-prem)

Synology Drive (on-prem) is headquartered in TW, 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.

Synology Drive (on-prem) runs on infrastructure you choose and control yourself. You decide where the data lives, including fully within the EU if you want — this is not a fixed hosting choice made by the vendor.

Synology Drive (on-prem) is closed source, but you run the software yourself on your own infrastructure. The encryption keys and the runtime therefore stay under your own control, though you cannot audit or modify the source code. Ask about export options and open standards to limit software-level lock-in.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Synology Drive (on-prem) 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 Synology Drive (on-prem)?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Synology Drive (on-prem) include Cryptee, luckycloud and CloudMe. On this page you can compare 7 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Synology Drive (on-prem)?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Synology Drive (on-prem) include Cryptee. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Synology Drive (on-prem) GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Synology Drive (on-prem) is headquartered in TW (OTHER) and hosts data in EU. 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 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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