Location and legal area
Digital sovereignty
Where your data lives decides which law applies and who can demand access. That is why every layer is listed here individually — with the place where it actually runs.
Short answer
Yes, Vryne is digitally sovereign and GDPR-compliant. The operator is a company based in Germany; German law and the German place of jurisdiction apply. Application, database, vector index, document storage, backups, logs and the language models run exclusively in data centres in Germany. No transfer of your documents to a third country takes place, and no model is trained on your content.
No US cloud provider is used — neither AWS nor Microsoft Azure nor Google Cloud, not even with a region in Frankfurt. Hosting is in Falkenstein, compute runs on open-weight models in German data centres. Vryne does not call an API from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google Gemini — not even via a European reseller.
Sovereign is whoever decides for themselves — and who does not depend on a provider beyond their own legal area staying quiet. For a system that reads your contracts, minutes and personnel files, that is not a matter of attitude but a practical one.
Provider in Germany
Developed and operated by a company based in Germany. German law, German place of jurisdiction, German-language data processing agreement.
No third-country transfer of your content
Documents, questions, answers and vectors stay in Germany; you do not need standard contractual clauses or a review of supplementary measures for them. The only exception is, temporarily, mail delivery via Resend in the USA — it transmits the recipient address and the message text, never document content.
No training on your content
The model provider receives only the text sections needed for the respective question — and does not train on them.
Nothing in the browser from outside
No external fonts, no CDN caching outside the EU. The only foreign script is cookieless reach measurement via an EU endpoint — switchable off.
Where each layer runs
Layer by layer, without a catch-all term.
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Application
GermanyContainer hosting in Falkenstein, without a detour via a US provider.
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Database and vector index
GermanyYour documents, their text sections and the vectors computed from them.
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Document storage
GermanyThe original files, separated by organisation and retrievable only signed.
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Backups
GermanyNo replication to another region, not even for failover.
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Logs and metrics
GermanyNo forwarding to an analytics or logging service outside the EU.
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Language models
GermanyA European gateway, restricted to data centres in Germany — details below.
Models — the point where many providers fall silent
Here is what we can assure, and what we cannot.
The language models run via a European gateway that is restricted to data centres in Germany for us. Only freely available models are used, whose parameters are published and that any data centre can operate itself — no closed models from US providers, not even via a European reseller.
In concrete terms: Vryne does not call any API from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Microsoft Azure OpenAI or AWS Bedrock. The models used come from families such as Mistral, Llama, Qwen and Apertus — open weights, operated on German servers.
That has a price, and we name it: the selection is significantly smaller than with providers that shop across Europe or worldwide. A model that no German data centre operates is simply not available with us — even if it ranks higher in benchmarks. We think that is the right order: first the location, then the benchmark.
Manufacturer and location are two different things. The model selection shows names like Meta, Mistral or the Swiss AI Initiative — that is who trained and published the weights, not where compute runs. That is exactly what open models enable: the weights are freely available, they are operated here. A model from Meta therefore runs on a German server with us, without Meta being involved in the question.
It is also traceable: every answer states which provider produced it and in which country — including energy and water consumption. Which models are available in your organisation at all is decided by the administrators.
What we assure
- Application, database, document storage, backups and logs run in German data centres.
- The model layer also runs in Germany — no call leaves the country.
- Exclusively open-weight models, no closed models from US providers.
- Every answer states which provider produced it and in which country.
What we do not assure
None of these points touches your documents: knowledge base, questions and answers stay in Germany in any case.
- The selection of models is smaller than with providers that shop worldwide. That is the price for every model standing in Germany.
- Mail delivery temporarily runs via Resend in the USA. That is the only component outside the EU, affects only sign-in links, invitations and purchase confirmations — never your documents — and we are actively looking for a European replacement. As soon as the choice is made, we switch; the change is announced, like every new service provider, with 30 days’ notice.
- The optional web search forwards search terms to public search engines and fetches external pages — that leaves the EU. Your documents remain untouched by this.
- Operation in our own data centres is not planned. Vryne is a hosted service. Should own data centres be desired, this will happen exclusively in Germany.
- Not that a model never errs. That is why every answer shows the source it comes from.
Frequent questions
What data protection officers want to know first.
Is Vryne GDPR-compliant?
Vryne is built so that its use is GDPR-compliant: documents, questions, answers and vectors are processed exclusively in German data centres, no third-country transfer takes place for them, and no model is trained on your content. Add to that a data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR with a TOM annex, an open list of subprocessors and a German place of jurisdiction. Digital sovereignty is the prerequisite here, not an end in itself: because processing ends in Germany, the review of whether standard contractual clauses hold in individual cases does not apply to your documents.
Is Vryne digitally sovereign?
Yes, Vryne is digitally sovereign. The operator is a company based in Germany; German law and the German place of jurisdiction apply. Application, database, vector index, document storage, backups, logs and the language models run exclusively in data centres in Germany. No transfer of your documents to a third country takes place, and no model is trained on your content. Only open-weight models are used, operated on German servers — no closed models from US providers.
Which AI models does Vryne use — do they run at OpenAI, Anthropic or Google?
Neither. Vryne does not call any API from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Microsoft Azure OpenAI or AWS Bedrock — not even via a European reseller. All model calls run via Melious, a European inference gateway restricted to data centres in Germany for Vryne. Only open-weight models from families such as Mistral, Llama (Meta), Qwen and Apertus (Swiss AI Initiative) are used. Manufacturer and operator are two different things: whoever trained and published the weights is not whoever computes — a model from Meta runs on a German server with Vryne, without Meta being involved in the question.
Are our documents used to train AI models?
No. Neither Vryne nor the operator of the models trains on your documents, questions or answers. That is what the data processing agreement says; technically the model layer only ever receives the text sections a single question currently needs — never the full knowledge base.
Is the data with a US cloud provider like AWS, Azure or Google Cloud?
No. No US hyperscaler is used, not even with a region in Frankfurt. Hosting is with Sliplane in Falkenstein, Germany; application, database, document storage and backups live there. The question of whether the US CLOUD Act reaches your content therefore does not arise for Vryne.
Does a transfer to a third country take place?
Not for your documents, text sections, questions and answers — processing ends in Germany. The only component outside the EU is temporarily mail delivery via Resend in the USA; it carries sign-in links, invitations and purchase confirmations, never content from your knowledge base. For your record of processing that means: standard contractual clauses at most for mail delivery, not for AI processing.
Does real sovereignty not require self-hosting, e.g. with AnythingLLM or PrivateGPT?
No. Self-hosting is a question of the operating model, not of sovereignty — it only shifts responsibility for servers, updates, model operation and backups to you. A self-hosted tool that then calls the OpenAI API is less sovereign than Vryne. What matters is which law applies and where compute runs: German operating company, German data centres, open models in Germany. The original files remain yours — they can be retrieved at any time.
Do other organisations see our documents?
No. Documents, text sections, chats and messages belong to your organisation, and every search filters on that. The separation runs through the organisation, not through a rule that could be forgotten in the application.
What exactly does the model provider get to see?
The question and the text sections that were fetched from your documents for it — not the complete files and not the rest of your knowledge base. What was sent along is listed as the source reference on the answer.
Can we decide which models may be used?
Yes. Administrators release in the administration which models are available in your organisation. Anything not released simply does not appear in the application.
What happens when we delete a document?
It disappears together with its text sections and the vectors computed from them. Answers no longer rely on it afterwards — no index remains that still knows the content.
Does Vryne set tracking cookies?
No. Only what sign-in and your privacy choice need is set. There are no advertising or profiling cookies. We count page views with Fathom Analytics — without cookies, without an identifier, via an EU endpoint — and you can object at any time via the privacy settings in the footer.
And the web search — does that also stay in Germany?
No, and we say so openly. The search itself runs on an instance we operate, but it is a metasearch engine and forwards the search terms to public search engines; if a model then opens a page, that page’s operator sees the access. Only the search query is transmitted, never a document from your knowledge base — and without a configured search the tool is not even offered to a model.
Can you achieve digital sovereignty with a US company like AWS?
It depends on what you mean by sovereignty. Legal sovereignty — complete freedom from US laws — does not exist with a US provider, not even in a data centre in Frankfurt. Technologically and operationally, however, a lot is achievable: whoever encrypts consistently and manages the keys outside the cloud can force AWS to ultimately deliver only storage and compute without being able to read the content itself. That is a legitimate path — but a laborious one that permanently demands architecture and review, and it changes nothing about the applicable law. We chose the path that avoids the question altogether: German operating company, German data centres, German law.
Who besides you is involved?
The hosting operator, the model gateway, the payment provider CopeCart in Berlin, the cookieless reach measurement by Fathom and — temporarily — Resend for mail delivery. The search instance for the web search we operate ourselves on the same infrastructure. All service providers are listed with seat, purpose and processing location among the subprocessors — readable, not just in the contract annex.
What this means for your documentation
For your documents, questions, answers and vectors no transfer to a third country takes place. That removes the review of whether standard contractual clauses and supplementary measures hold in individual cases — a question that has occupied many data protection officers since the end of the Privacy Shield. For mail delivery via Resend (USA), standard contractual clauses apply temporarily until the provider is replaced. For everything else, the reference to Germany is enough for your record of processing — for application, data storage and models alike.
Who besides us is involved is listed among the subprocessors. Back to the Privacy centre.