Cloud IAM vs Clerk
Cloud IAM is a European alternative to Clerk: same security & identity use case, headquartered in France and operating under GDPR by default, while Clerk is based in the United States.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Managed Keycloak service deployed in 20 minutes — 70+ regions across 5 cloud providers, 99.95% SLA, 500+ customers, and 100% European support team.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- GDPR by default
- Yes
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- No
- Free tier
- No
A curated collection of the best European alternatives to Clerk.
- Jurisdiction
- US
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
Cloud IAM vs Clerk at a glance
| Cloud IAM | Clerk | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | France | US |
| Data jurisdiction | EU / EEA | US law applies |
| GDPR by default | Yes | Requires DPA + transfer assessment |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | Yes |
| Open source | No | — |
| Free tier | No | — |
| Best for | Teams that need security & identity with EU data residency | Teams already invested in the Clerk ecosystem |
Choose Cloud IAM if…
- You want your data to stay under EU law without extra legal paperwork
- GDPR compliance or public-sector requirements apply to you
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with Clerk if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the Clerk ecosystem
- Your organisation has no EU data-residency constraints
- Migration costs outweigh the jurisdiction benefits for now
About Cloud IAM
Cloud-IAM is a fully managed Keycloak service that takes the operational burden out of identity and access management. Deploy a production-grade Keycloak instance in under 20 minutes, without managing infrastructure, patches, or backups.
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Europe, Cloud-IAM serves 500+ customers with 20M+ managed users across a 100% in-house European team. The service spans 70+ regions across AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Scaleway, and Outscale, giving teams the cloud provider and data residency they need.
Key features:
- Instant deployment with fully provisioned Keycloak in 20 minutes, free to start
- Multi-cloud reach across 70+ regions and 5 providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, Scaleway, Outscale)
- High availability backed by a 99.95% SLA and 99.9834% measured uptime in 2025
- Standards-based with OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, and custom SPI support
- Data portability via full import/export for complete credential sovereignty
- 24/7 European support from an on-call team based entirely in Europe
- Compliance spanning ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, NIS 2, HDS, and SecNumCloud 3.2
Built on Keycloak (Red Hat-backed open source), Cloud-IAM adds enterprise reliability, SLA guarantees, and European support without the ops overhead.
Why choose Cloud IAM over Clerk?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. Clerk is headquartered in US, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes: the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
Cloud IAM removes that overhead. As a France-based provider, it operates natively under GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and finance, that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single non-EU jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.