EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignNotes & TasksHeadquarters: DE

Things: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Things is a personal task manager from Cultured Code for planning the day, managing projects and working towards personal goals. The vendor sells it as an app for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro. According to the privacy policy, cloud hosting for the service is carried out by third-party processors.

Cultured Code GmbH & Co. KG is based in Stuttgart, Germany, and its privacy policy names it as the data controller, referring to the GDPR and German data protection law. The policy does not state where the processors store data, and it requires processors outside the EU to provide safeguards, so the data location should be confirmed with the vendor. No parent company is named on the pages reviewed. For a European organisation this is a provider established in the EU and subject to EU data protection law, while the locations of its sub-processors still need checking.

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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
HeadquartersDE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
CategoryNotes & Tasks
TypeProduct
Websiteculturedcode.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Things

The European alternatives to Things 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

25 European Notes & Tasks 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 Things

Things 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 Things scores best on data residency.

Things 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 Things 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 Things?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Things include Anytype, Bear and Capacities. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Things?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Things include Carnet, CryptPad, HedgeDoc and Joplin. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Things is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Things 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 Notes & Tasks

Notes & Tasks: Note-taking apps and task management — write, organise, sync. 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 Things — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score