Non-EU vendorNotes & TasksHeadquarters: US

Turtl: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Turtl is an encrypted, collaborative note-taking app for organising bookmarks, passwords, files and lists. Notes are kept in Spaces, can be searched by text or tags and written in Markdown. They sync across devices and can be shared selectively with colleagues or family. You can use the hosted premium service or run your own Turtl server at home or at work.

The source code is public on GitHub: the apps are licensed under GPL-3.0 and the server under AGPL-3.0. The hosted service is offered under the name Lyon Bros LLC; the GitHub organisation lists San Francisco and the privacy policy refers to US court orders, so the provider is American. The provider does not state where hosted data is stored; according to the privacy policy, data remains encrypted on the service. Organisations that want full control over jurisdiction and location can host the open-source server themselves in Europe, for example with a European cloud provider. Development has slowed in recent years, which is a point of attention for long-term business use.

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Sovereignty score

71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-3100
EU-only hosting
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-390
Self-hostable: encryption keys under your own control
Freedom from lock-in SOV-680
Open source: low switching costs
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-675
Source code auditable, forkable and self-hostable

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	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	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	AKAMAI-LINODE-AP - Akamai Connected Cloud, SG (US)Technically measured
Category	Notes & Tasks
Type	Product
Website	turtlapp.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 Turtl

The European alternatives to Turtl 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 Turtl

Turtl 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.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Turtl scores best on data residency.

Turtl is open source. You can audit the source code, self-host the software and keep the encryption keys under your own control. Switching is easier because data and software are not tied to a single party.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Turtl 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 Turtl?

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

Are there open-source alternatives to Turtl?

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

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

Turtl is headquartered in US 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 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.

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