Category: Design

6 European alternatives to Figma — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted.

Non-EU vendor

US design and prototyping platform from San Francisco; FigJam (online whiteboard) is bundled with all paid seats since March 2025. EU file hosting available to Enterprise customers.

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Facts

✓ 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 September 19, 2026.How we verify

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: Design
Type: Product
GDPR-compliant: Yes
Open-source: No
Data hosting: US, EU

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".

Data Processing Agreement (DPA): figma.com/legal/dpa/

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

CSA STARConfirmed in registry

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

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 Figma

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)	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 Figma

Figma 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.

Figma hosts data in US, EU. 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.

Figma 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 Figma together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Figma

The European alternatives to Figma 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.

Penpot
Open-source design and prototype platform as an alternative to Figma
ES · open-source
↗
Excalidraw
Open-source virtual whiteboard for sketches and diagrams
CZ · open-source
↗
Lunacy
Free graphic design application with built-in AI and Sketch compatibility
CY · commercial
↗
Sketch
Dutch vector design tool for UI/UX design on macOS
NL · commercial
↗
Spacedeck
Open-source collaborative whiteboard platform for visual collaboration
DE · open-source
↗
CryptPad
End-to-end encrypted collaboration (FR/EU).
FR · open-source
↗

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Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Figma?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Figma include Penpot, Excalidraw and Lunacy. On this page you can compare 6 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Figma?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Figma include Penpot, Excalidraw, Spacedeck and CryptPad. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Figma is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, 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.

Digital sovereignty in Design

Design: Graphic design — photo editing, illustration, desktop publishing. 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.

All European Design vendors How the score is calculated

Also in this category

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