EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceE-commerceHeadquarters: CH

Unchained Engine: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Unchained Engine is an open-source e-commerce engine from Unchained Commerce GmbH. It is a headless back end for web shops, B2B portals and D2C stores, covering cart, pricing, checkout, payments and orders, with a GraphQL API and a TypeScript code base. Search runs through Apache Solr or Elasticsearch, and connectors exist for ERP systems such as SAP, Microsoft Navision, SelectLine and Bexio. According to the company, the engine has been publicly available on GitHub since 2018 under the EUPL licence. You can host the engine yourself or have Unchained manage it.

Unchained Commerce GmbH is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. Switzerland is not an EU member but is an EFTA country with an EU adequacy decision. The company states that it hosts in Switzerland without AWS, Google Cloud, Azure or Cloudflare. Because the source code is open, you can also run the engine on your own infrastructure in the EU and so limit vendor dependence.

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Sovereignty score
94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    Hosting in Switzerland only (recognised by the EU as adequate)
  • 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-6100
    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 October 14, 2026
Headquarters
CH (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
CHVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
E-commerce
Type
Product
Website
unchained.ch ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Unchained Engine

The European alternatives to Unchained Engine come from our knowledge base of over 9,200 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

129 European E-commerce 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 Unchained Engine

Unchained Engine is headquartered in Switzerland and falls under Swiss law, including the revised Swiss data protection act. Switzerland is not an EU member, but the European Commission recognises its level of data protection as adequate. Its Swiss headquarters does not by itself bring it under US legislation such as the CLOUD Act.

Unchained Engine hosts data in Switzerland only. Switzerland is not part of the EU or the EEA, so the GDPR does not apply there directly; the European Commission does recognise Swiss data protection as adequate, so personal data can go there without extra safeguards. Our model therefore scores it between EU hosting and hosting outside Europe. If you require strictly EU hosting, take this into account.

Unchained Engine 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 Unchained Engine 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 Unchained Engine?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Unchained Engine include ablefy, SCAYLE and Actindo. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Unchained Engine?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Unchained Engine include Akeneo. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Unchained Engine GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Unchained Engine is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in CH. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Unchained Engine 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 14, 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

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in E-commerce

E-commerce: Online sales, webshops, e-commerce platforms and product information management. 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 Unchained Engine — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score