Is Grants 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. Grants 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 Grants 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.

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Grants: the EU alternative to BrainHive Consulting

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

EU alternative

BrainHive

Business plan

Finn GlasCo-Founder + Engineering

·May 15, 2026·

1 min read

If your reason for moving off BrainHive Consulting is data sovereignty, the comparison gets simpler. Grants 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

BrainHive is a Hofheim-based consulting firm with offices in London and Munich. They write customised business plans in 4-21 days for €600-1,500 (standard), more for complex projects. The output is bank-ready and good - if you're applying for a Hausbank loan, a Gründungszuschuss from the Arbeitsagentur, or a generic landlord/customer-pitch business plan, BrainHive's product fits. Grants does a different job: it produces grant applications - EXIST Ideenpapier, IGP project description, KMU innovativ Skizze, Horizon EIC narrative - which use different chapter structures, different reviewer criteria, and different evidence standards than a bank business plan. PTJ reviewers want Innovationshöhe with citations to the state of the art; a bank wants a payback calculation. A great BrainHive plan still needs translation before it lands in EASY-Online.

EU jurisdiction

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

Grants 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. BrainHive Consulting's setup is the variable - if their primary infra is US-based, the CLOUD Act applies regardless of what their privacy page claims.

Grants vs BrainHive Consulting: EU comparison

	Ours Grants	Theirs BrainHive Consulting
Bank-loan-ready business plan (Hausbank, KfW)
Gründungszuschuss / Arbeitsagentur format
EXIST Ideenpapier (chapter-structured, PTJ-ready)
IGP / KMU innovativ / BMBF Skizze workflow
Horizon EIC + ERC narrative structure
Pricing model	Software subscription	€600-1,500 per document
Founders write themselves (learning + control)
Delivery time	Open whenever you want	4-21 days
Bilingual EN + DE editor

When to pick which

Pick Grants when

Your goal is a public-money grant (EXIST, IGP, KMU innovativ, BMBF, Horizon) - not a bank loan or Gründungszuschuss.

You want to keep the document structure your reviewer expects, with chapters mapped to programme criteria.

You expect to write 2-3+ grant applications across your first 2 years - the workspace pays back when you reuse chapters.

Pick BrainHive Consulting when

Your single deliverable is a bank-loan business plan for a Hausbank or KfW StartGeld application.

You want to delegate the writing entirely for a one-shot document with no follow-on application planned.

Your timeline is 4-21 days and you don't intend to learn the structure yourself.

EU-jurisdiction questions

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

Start with Grants

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

Written by

Finn Glas

Co-Founder + Engineering

Finn is one of the Co-Founders. He owns the engineering side, the infrastructure, and most of the late-night fixes that ship before anyone notices.

finn.glas at aicuflow dot comLinkedIn Website