EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorCompliance & GRCHeadquarters: AU

UpGuard: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

UpGuard is a cyber risk management platform for security and risk teams. It covers third-party (vendor) risk, with questionnaires and continuous monitoring, as well as attack surface and breach risk monitoring, user risk, a trust centre for sharing security documents, and API-based risk automation. Customers sign in to a web platform, and the company also offers integrations, services and a partner programme.

According to the company's February 2026 funding announcement, UpGuard is headquartered in Hobart, Tasmania, with US headquarters in Mountain View, California. The legal entity named on its website is UpGuard, Inc. The vendor names no parent company and does not state where customer data is hosted. A European organisation should therefore ask which regions store scan results, vendor questionnaires and user data, and which sub-processors can access them. Because the product gathers security information about a company's suppliers and infrastructure, these questions are central to the choice.

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Sovereignty score
32 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (AU)
  • Data residency SOV-30
    No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-340
    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-630
    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 11, 2026
HeadquartersAU (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionNo — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingOTHERVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantNoVendor-stated
CategoryCompliance & GRC
TypeProduct
Websiteupguard.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to UpGuard

The European alternatives to UpGuard 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

43 European Compliance & GRC 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 UpGuard

UpGuard is headquartered in AU, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

UpGuard hosts data outside the EU (OTHER). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

UpGuard 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 UpGuard 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 UpGuard?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to UpGuard include 2B Advice PrIME, Actecil and Adherent. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to UpGuard?

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

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

UpGuard is headquartered in AU (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 11, 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 Compliance & GRC

Compliance & GRC: Governance, risk management, compliance, privacy management and cookie consent. 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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8 European alternatives to UpGuard — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score