Non-EU vendorSearch EnginesHeadquarters: SG

Yep: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Yep is a search engine developed by Ahrefs, the company behind a well-known SEO software suite. It launched as a beta in 2022 and offers web search, image search, a news section and AI summaries. Yep relies on Ahrefs' own crawler. According to the vendor, it does not collect personal details such as location, name, age or gender by default and only stores search data that cannot be traced to individuals. At launch Ahrefs pledged to share a large part of advertising revenue with content creators. Ahrefs now also offers the search index as a search API for AI agents and other applications.

Yep is based in Singapore, and Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. is a Singapore company. No European vendor or European owner is involved. The sources consulted do not describe where the search service or the API is hosted. The software is not open source and cannot be self-hosted.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Yep pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

52 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (SG)
Data residency SOV-3100
EU-only hosting
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 July 2, 2026

Headquarters	SG (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	No — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	CLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	Search Engines
Type	Product
Website	yep.com ↗

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 Yep

The European alternatives to Yep 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

15 European Search Engines 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 Yep

Yep is headquartered in SG, 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.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Yep scores best on data residency.

Yep 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 Yep 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 Yep?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Yep include MetaGer, SearXNG and YaCy. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Yep?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Yep include MetaGer, SearXNG and YaCy. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Yep is headquartered in SG (OTHER) 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 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".

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 Search Engines

Search Engines: Search engines — privacy-friendly web searching. 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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