Non-EU vendorIoT & EmbeddedHeadquarters: US

ThingsBoard: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

ThingsBoard is an IoT platform for device management, data collection, processing and visualisation. Devices connect over protocols such as MQTT, CoAP and Modbus. The platform provides a rule engine, alarm rules, dashboards, multi-tenancy and role-based access control. It is available as a self-hosted on-premises edition, including for air-gapped environments, and as the managed service ThingsBoard Cloud.

According to its own privacy policy, ThingsBoard, Inc. is a US corporation. ThingsBoard Cloud has a North American and a European region, and the vendor's site says data in the European region is stored in the European Union. Account and licence data, however, are processed in the United States according to the privacy policy. The source code is on GitHub. From version 4.4 it is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1 (source-available, converting to Apache 2.0 after four years); earlier versions are Apache 2.0. Production use is free within the licence's additional use grant; beyond it a commercial licence is needed. Self-hosting keeps data in your own infrastructure.

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Sovereignty score

27 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
Key management with a non-European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-615
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 9, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EU, USVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	CLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	IoT & Embedded
Type	Product
Website	thingsboard.io ↗

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 ThingsBoard

The European alternatives to ThingsBoard come from our knowledge base of over 8,000 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

90 European IoT & Embedded 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 ThingsBoard

ThingsBoard is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

ThingsBoard hosts data in EU, US. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

ThingsBoard 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 ThingsBoard 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 ThingsBoard?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to ThingsBoard include Eclipse IoT, FIWARE and The Things Network. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to ThingsBoard?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to ThingsBoard include Eclipse IoT, FIWARE and The Things Network. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

ThingsBoard is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU, US. 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 October 9, 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 IoT & Embedded

IoT & Embedded: Internet of Things platforms, embedded systems and industrial IoT solutions. 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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