EU sovereignVPNHeadquarters: RO

VPN.ac: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

VPN.ac is a VPN service that encrypts internet traffic through gateways on several continents, including Europe, North America and Asia. The vendor provides its own apps for Windows, macOS, iOS and Android, with a Linux version in beta, and the service works with third-party clients such as OpenVPN Connect and WireGuard. According to the website, elliptic-curve cryptography, AES-GCM, obfuscation and WireGuard are supported.

VPN.ac is a service of Cryptolayer (formerly Netsec Interactive Solutions), which an independent review places in Sibiu, Romania, under Romanian law and therefore within the EU. The same review reports that basic connection data is kept during a session and removed shortly after disconnection. The gateway list includes EU locations but also the United States, Canada, Switzerland and Asia, so users decide where their traffic leaves the network. The website does not state where the company is formally incorporated. European organisations should confirm this, and the data-processing terms, with the provider.

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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 July 2, 2026

Headquarters	RO (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents	2 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal	OVH - OVH SAS, FR (FR)Technically measured
Category	VPN
Type	Product
Website	vpn.ac ↗

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 VPN.ac

The European alternatives to VPN.ac 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

21 European VPN 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 VPN.ac

VPN.ac is headquartered in RO 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 VPN.ac scores best on data residency.

VPN.ac 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 VPN.ac 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 VPN.ac?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to VPN.ac include AdGuard VPN, AirVPN and Avast SecureLine VPN. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to VPN.ac?

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

Is VPN.ac GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

VPN.ac is headquartered in RO (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes VPN.ac 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 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".

Security page / trust center: vpn.ac/security
EU hosting documented: vpn.ac/compliance

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

We found none of these signals on the vendor's own site when we checked.

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in VPN

VPN: Virtual private network — privacy protection, encrypted connection. 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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