Non-EU vendorAIHeadquarters: US

Zilliz Cloud: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Zilliz Cloud is a managed cloud service built on Milvus, the open-source vector database that stores and searches embeddings for AI applications. The company, Zilliz, was founded in 2017 and describes its product as a vector lakebase for enterprise AI powered by Milvus. Milvus remains an open-source project that can run on your own infrastructure. Zilliz was originally based in Shanghai and is now headquartered in the United States.

Zilliz is a privately held, venture-backed company with no majority owner named in public sources. Its headquarters is in the United States, so US legal process is relevant for hosted data. Its headquarters city is given variously as San Francisco or Redwood City. The company's website does not state the regions where Zilliz Cloud data is hosted, or whether GDPR terms and a data processing agreement apply. European customers should confirm the cloud region of each cluster before storing personal data in it. As Milvus is open source, a European organisation can also run the database on its own infrastructure.

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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	AI
Type	Product
Website	zilliz.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Zilliz Cloud

The European alternatives to Zilliz Cloud 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

55 European AI 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 Zilliz Cloud

Zilliz Cloud 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.

Zilliz Cloud 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.

Zilliz Cloud 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 Zilliz Cloud 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 Zilliz Cloud?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Zilliz Cloud include Aleph Alpha, Almato and Almawave. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Zilliz Cloud?

Our list of EU alternatives to Zilliz Cloud is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is Zilliz Cloud GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Zilliz Cloud 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 AI

AI: Artificial intelligence — large language models, translation, generative AI. 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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