Category: Virtualisation & Containers
8 European alternatives to IncludeOS — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted.
Norwegian minimal unikernel operating system (Oslo, founded 2015) for C++ cloud services, boots in milliseconds.
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Facts
- Headquarters
- NO (EU)
- Sovereignty model
- Open-source, distributed
- Category
- Virtualisation & Containers
- Type
- Product
- GDPR-compliant
- Yes
- Open-source
- Yes
- Data hosting
- 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".
No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction
Sovereignty profile of IncludeOS
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 EU: European law applies | 0 |
|---|---|---|
| Data residency (DRS) | EU-only hosting | 0 |
| Cryptographic key sovereignty (CKS) | Self-hostable: encryption keys under your own control | 10 |
| Platform lock-in (PLS) | Open source: low switching costs | 20 |
| Source & runtime sovereignty (SRS) | Source code auditable, forkable and self-hostable | 0 |
| Average | 6 |
Why digital sovereignty matters with IncludeOS
IncludeOS is headquartered in NO and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.
Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so IncludeOS scores best on data residency.
IncludeOS is open source. You can audit the source code, self-host the software and keep the encryption keys under your own control. Switching is easier because data and software are not tied to a single party.
What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs IncludeOS together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.
Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to IncludeOS
The European alternatives to IncludeOS 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.
- APPUiO (VSHN)↗
Swiss managed OpenShift/Kubernetes hosting platform operated by VSHN AG (Zurich, Neugasse 10, CH-8005), founded 2014 and 100% self-owned with no foreign parent. Product is actively marketed in 2026 with current pricing, documentation, and free trial. Provides multi-environment container deployment with built-in DevOps/SRE support; Swiss data centers support FINMA-relevant compliance needs for financial-sector customers. Region classified as 'OTHER' (Switzerland is not EU/EEA) though it qualifies for eu-classification 'efta' per category rules.
CH · commercial
- Giant Swarm↗
German managed Kubernetes platform for enterprise cloud-native infrastructure
DE · open-source
- Kubermatic↗
German enterprise Kubernetes platform for multi-cloud container management
DE · open-source
- Linbit DRBD/LINSTOR↗
Austrian open-source distributed block device and storage orchestration for HA virtualization clusters.
AT · open-source
- OpenNebula↗
Spanish open-source platform for sovereign cloud and virtualisation infrastructure.
ES · open-source
Frequently asked questions
What is the best European alternative to IncludeOS?
It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to IncludeOS 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 IncludeOS?
Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to IncludeOS include Gardener, Giant Swarm, Harvester, K3s, Kubermatic, Linbit DRBD/LINSTOR and OpenNebula. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.
Is IncludeOS GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?
IncludeOS is headquartered in NO (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes IncludeOS an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.
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
- Proxmox VEEUAT
- SUSE Linux EnterpriseEULU
- SUSE RancherEULU
- SysEleven MetaKubeEUDE
- VirtuozzoEUCH
- XCP-ngEUFR
How sovereign is your whole stack?
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