Is Sprachmemo subject to the CLOUD Act?

No. The CLOUD Act compels US-based companies (or US subsidiaries) to hand over data they control, regardless of where it physically lives. Sprachmemo has no US entity, no US contracts, and no US-controlled infrastructure in the data plane. Stripe processes payment data and is US-headquartered, but that boundary is well-defined: payment metadata only, never your records.

Where exactly is my data stored?

On dedicated servers we operate ourselves, physically located in Germany. The audit log, attachments, embeddings - everything in the data plane - lives there. Backups stay within the same EU jurisdiction in different physical locations and roll off on a 30-day window. We deliberately do not name the exact data centre - knowing the rack does not buy the customer anything and would make operator changes a public event.

Do you log IPs or session metadata to a US service?

No third-party analytics, no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel, no third-country tag manager. The first-party device + session ledger lives in our own Postgres + Redis - same EU boundary as the rest of the data plane. Logs are operational only and rotate at 30 days.

What happens if I'm a customer outside the EU?

You can use Sprachmemo from anywhere. The data still lives in the EU; the request travels from your location to our servers and back. That's a posture choice on our side, not a geo-restriction on yours.

Sprachmemo

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Sprachmemo: the EU alternative to Otter.ai

Same job, hosted in the EU. Sprachmemo runs in Germany under German law - your data stays in EU jurisdiction end to end.

EU alternative

Otter.ai

Privacy

Compare

Julia YukovichCo-Founder + CEO

·February 4, 2026·

2 min read

If your reason for moving off Otter.ai is data sovereignty, the comparison gets simpler. Sprachmemo is hosted in Germany on infrastructure we operate ourselves - no US-headquartered company in the request path. The CLOUD Act does not reach what physically lives here.

At a glance

Otter has a richer collaboration surface and a longer-trained English model. Sprachmemo wins on hosting, on the data-ownership posture, on German-language accuracy out of the box, and on the no-account anonymous recording path. Pick by which of those matters more.

EU jurisdiction

What 'EU-hosted' actually means here, end to end

Sprachmemo runs on dedicated machines we operate ourselves, physically located in Germany. There is no US-headquartered subprocessor in the request path - the data plane (your records, your files, your audit log) lives entirely in EU jurisdiction. Two third parties exist outside that boundary: Stripe (payment information only, under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework) and the mail relay for transactional email. Neither sees your records. Otter.ai's setup is the variable - if their primary infra is US-based, the CLOUD Act applies regardless of what their privacy page claims.

Sprachmemo vs Otter.ai: EU comparison

	Ours Sprachmemo	Theirs Otter.ai
Hosting region	Germany (Hetzner Falkenstein)	USA (AWS)
Transcription engine Whether the engine is open source and inspectable.	Vosk (open source, on our servers)	Proprietary, hosted on their infra
AI training on your audio		Yes by default, opt-out in settings
Anonymous recording Record before creating an account.
German out of the box		English-only on free plan
Editable transcript
Live in-meeting transcription
Speaker labels
Audio export (your file back)		On paid plans
Pricing entry	Free, no credit card	Free with 300 min/month, then USD 16.99+/mo

When to pick which

Pick Sprachmemo when

Your audio includes anything you wouldn't want screenshot to a US tech firm (patient notes, legal calls, business strategy, family conversations).

You're recording in German and don't want to pay extra for an accuracy upgrade.

You want a low-friction tap-and-talk surface without onboarding through a meeting integration.

Your team is small enough that 'live in-meeting captions' isn't on the must-have list.

Pick Otter.ai when

You need live captions inside a Zoom or Google Meet call and your team is on US infra already.

Speaker separation is critical (panel discussions, multi-host podcasts, sales-call coaching).

English-only workflow and you've already standardised on Otter for the team.

EU-jurisdiction questions

Specific to where the data lives, who can subpoena it, and what crosses borders.

Start with Sprachmemo

Free plan, no credit card. We host in Germany. Export + delete are self-serve.

Written by

Julia Yukovich

Co-Founder + CEO

Julia is one of the Co-Founders. She handles design, product direction, and most of the support replies that arrive in the morning.

julia.yukovich at aicuflow dot comLinkedIn