Self-hosted / open sourceNetwork & MonitoringHeadquarters: US

Wireshark: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Wireshark is a free, open source network protocol analyser. It captures network traffic and lets you browse it interactively, with deep inspection of hundreds of protocols. Administrators and developers use it to find bottlenecks, troubleshoot problems, understand traffic patterns and improve performance. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and UNIX, is available in more than twenty languages and is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2. You install it on your own workstation; no vendor service is required.

Development and distribution are supported by the Wireshark Foundation, a non-profit with 501(c)(3) status based in Davis, California, which relies on donations. The Foundation also stewards Stratoshark. No commercial parent company is named. Because the software runs locally, captured traffic is processed on your own system. The source code is public, and the program can also be built from source. Stewardship sits with an organisation in the United States.

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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 September 21, 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	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	CLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	Network & Monitoring
Type	Product
Website	wireshark.org ↗

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 Wireshark

The European alternatives to Wireshark 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

41 European Network & Monitoring 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 Wireshark

Wireshark 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 Wireshark scores best on data residency.

Wireshark 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 Wireshark 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 Wireshark?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Wireshark include Centreon, Icinga and ntopng. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Wireshark?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Wireshark include Centreon, Icinga, ntopng, openITCOCKPIT, Pandora FMS, Uptrace and Zabbix. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Wireshark 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 September 21, 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 Network & Monitoring

Network & Monitoring: Network monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, log management and observability. 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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