EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignCollaborationHeadquarters: FR

Tchap: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Tchap is an instant messaging service for civil servants in France. Through apps for Android, iOS and the web, public-sector staff can send direct and group messages to one another. The Interministerial Digital Directorate (DINUM) developed the service and runs it itself. Tchap is built on the open Matrix protocol and uses a client based on Element, the company that also helped DINUM deploy it. Access is restricted to the public sector.

Tchap is operated by a French state directorate, so it has no foreign corporate owner. Element's case study describes on-premise hosting without naming a country, and press reports place the servers in France. Organisations outside the French public sector cannot use the service. For European public bodies that want to run their own Matrix-based messenger rather than depend on a chat platform hosted in the United States, the setup is a useful reference point.

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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 October 10, 2026
HeadquartersFR (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantNoVendor-stated
CategoryCollaboration
TypeProduct
Websitetchap.gouv.fr ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Tchap

The European alternatives to Tchap come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 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

37 European Collaboration 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 Tchap

Tchap is headquartered in FR 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 Tchap scores best on data residency.

Tchap 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 Tchap 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 Tchap?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Tchap include BigBlueButton (self-host), CryptPad and Nextcloud Deck. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Tchap?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Tchap include BigBlueButton (self-host), CryptPad, Nextcloud Deck, FluffyChat and HedgeDoc. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Tchap GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Tchap is headquartered in FR (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Tchap 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 Collaboration

Collaboration: Team communication, file sharing, video conferencing, document editing. 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 Tchap — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score