Category: Database & Data Management
8 European alternatives to DuckDB — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted.
In-process analytical database, the SQLite for OLAP, developed in the Netherlands
Facts
- Headquarters
- NL (EU)
- Category
- Database & Data Management
- Type
- Product
- GDPR-compliant
- Yes
- Open-source
- Yes
- Data hosting
- EU
Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to DuckDB
- Elastic↗
Elastic (Elastic N.V.), headquartered at Keizersgracht 281, Amsterdam, Netherlands, develops Elasticsearch, the widely used distributed search and analytics engine, alongside Kibana and Logstash (the "ELK stack"). Since September 2024 Elasticsearch and Kibana source code is triple-licensed under AGPLv3, SSPL, and the Elastic License v2, with AGPLv3 being OSI-approved, restoring genuine open-source status after the 2021 licensing dispute. It can be self-hosted, run via Elastic Cloud with selectable EU data-center regions, or deployed via other providers, giving strong flexibility for EU sovereignty requirements.
NL · open-source
- Meilisearch↗
Open-core search engine: the Community Edition is MIT-licensed and free to use, but the Enterprise Edition (sharding, advanced observability, analytics) has been under BUSL 1.1 since v1.19 (August 2025), requiring a commercial agreement for production use.
FR · commercial
Frequently asked questions
What is the best European alternative to DuckDB?
It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to DuckDB include Aiven, CrateDB and Elastic. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.
Are there open-source alternatives to DuckDB?
Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to DuckDB include CrateDB, Elastic, MariaDB and TigerData. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.
Is DuckDB GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?
DuckDB is headquartered in NL (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes DuckDB an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.