EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorSocial MediaHeadquarters: US

Yelp: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Yelp is a platform where users find, review and discuss local businesses such as restaurants, home services, auto services and health and beauty providers. Businesses can manage their listing and advertise through Yelp for Business. The platform is available through the website and mobile apps and is operated by Yelp itself as a cloud service.

Yelp Inc. is a Delaware corporation headquartered in San Francisco, United States, and is therefore subject to US law such as the CLOUD Act. Its privacy policy names Yelp Ireland Ltd. as the controller for residents of the EEA and Switzerland, and states that personal information may be transferred, processed and stored outside the EEA, UK or Switzerland, including in the United States. For transfers between group companies Yelp uses Standard Contractual Clauses. The policy does not name specific storage locations. Yelp states that it does not train generative AI models using the personal information of European residents.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Yelp pre-selected
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Sovereignty score
17 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-30
    No hosting in Europe (US)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
    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-615
    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
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
USVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
Social Media
Type
Product
Website
yelp.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Yelp

The European alternatives to Yelp 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

34 European Social Media 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 Yelp

Yelp 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.

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

Yelp 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 Yelp 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 Yelp?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Yelp include Agorapulse, Akkoma and BeReal. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Yelp?

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

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

Yelp is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. 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 Social Media

Social Media: Social networks — posts, media, communities. 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 Yelp — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score