EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceVirtualisation & ContainersHeadquarters: CN

ZStack: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

ZStack is a Chinese provider of cloud infrastructure software. Its private cloud platform, ZStack Cloud Foundation (ZCF), combines compute, storage, networking, containers and security, and is built inside the customer's own data centre. The portfolio also includes ZVF, a modular virtualisation platform on ZSphere, a hyperconverged infrastructure product with a three-node minimum, and AI infrastructure software. The products are mainly delivered as on-premises or private cloud deployments.

The legal entity, Shanghai Yunzhou Technology Co., Ltd., is headquartered in Shanghai, China, which places it under Chinese jurisdiction. Its ownership is not stated on the website, and the site does not describe where customer data is stored or processed. Because the software runs in the customer's own data centre, the main sovereignty questions concern the vendor's access to installed systems, updates and support channels. European organisations should review those arrangements, the data processing terms and the legal environment of a Chinese supplier before choosing this product.

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Sovereignty score
63 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (CN)
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-380
    Closed source, but self-hostable: encryption keys and runtime under your own control
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-645
    Closed source, but self-hostable on your own infrastructure

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
HeadquartersCN (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionNo — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Data hostingSelf-hosted, e.g. in OTHER (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantNoVendor-stated
CategoryVirtualisation & Containers
TypeProduct
Websitezstack.io ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to ZStack

The European alternatives to ZStack come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 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

20 European Virtualisation & Containers 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 ZStack

ZStack is headquartered in CN, 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.

ZStack runs on infrastructure you choose and control yourself. You decide where the data lives, including fully within the EU if you want — this is not a fixed hosting choice made by the vendor.

ZStack is closed source, but you run the software yourself on your own infrastructure. The encryption keys and the runtime therefore stay under your own control, though you cannot audit or modify the source code. Ask about export options and open standards to limit software-level lock-in.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs ZStack 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 ZStack?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to ZStack include APPUiO (VSHN), Gardener and Giant Swarm. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to ZStack?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to ZStack include Gardener, Giant Swarm, Harvester, IncludeOS, K3s, Kamaji and Kubermatic. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

ZStack is headquartered in CN (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. 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

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 11, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Virtualisation & Containers

Virtualisation & Containers: Virtualisation platforms, container management, Kubernetes distributions and hypervisors. 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 ZStack — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score