Category: Storage & Backup
6 European alternatives to Amazon S3 — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted.
US (AWS) object storage; the de facto S3 standard for cloud storage of unstructured data.
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Facts
- Headquarters
- US (US)
- EU adequacy decision
- Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework
- Sovereignty model
- Vendor-hosted (non-EU)
- Category
- Storage & Backup
- Type
- Product
- GDPR-compliant
- Yes
- Open-source
- No
- Data hosting
- US, EU, APAC
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
Technical hosting signal
Independently established via a DNS/network lookup (not information from the vendor itself). This shows which network currently serves this vendor's website — often a CDN — so it does not necessarily reflect where the actual service or data is hosted.
- Network
- AMAZON-02 - Amazon.com, Inc., US (US)
Provenance:Technically measured
Sovereignty profile of Amazon S3
How this vendor scores on the five dimensions of the Digital Sovereignty Heatmap: 0 is sovereign, 100 is high exposure. These are the same scores the assessment uses.
| Jurisdictional exposure (JES) | Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702 | 90 |
|---|---|---|
| Data residency (DRS) | EU and non-EU hosting (US, EU, APAC) | 50 |
| Cryptographic key sovereignty (CKS) | Key management with a non-European vendor | 80 |
| Platform lock-in (PLS) | Closed source: switching requires data migration | 60 |
| Source & runtime sovereignty (SRS) | Closed source, runtime with the vendor | 85 |
| Average | 73 |
Why digital sovereignty matters with Amazon S3
Amazon S3 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.
Amazon S3 hosts data in US, EU, APAC. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.
Amazon S3 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 Amazon S3 together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.
Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Amazon S3
The European alternatives to Amazon S3 come from our knowledge base of over 3,600 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.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best European alternative to Amazon S3?
It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Amazon S3 include Cubbit, Impossible Cloud and OVHcloud. On this page you can compare 6 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.
Are there open-source alternatives to Amazon S3?
Our list of EU alternatives to Amazon S3 is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.
Is Amazon S3 GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?
Amazon S3 is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU, APAC. 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.
Digital sovereignty in Storage & Backup
Storage & Backup: Business storage, backup solutions, object storage and data recovery. 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
How sovereign is your whole stack?
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