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 servers we manage, 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 Förderberatungen / agencies

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

EU alternative

EXIST

Consultants

Cost

Finn GlasCo-Founder + Engineering

·June 28, 2026·

6 min read

·Updated

If your reason for moving off Förderberatungen / agencies 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

Förderberatungen are real experts and earn their keep on six-figure Forschungstransfer Phase II awards. For a Gründerstipendium-sized application (€139,600 over 12 months) the typical 15% commission lands at €20,940 - paid out of money you have not seen yet, on a grant you may not be awarded. And read the contract twice: many agencies bill the percentage on the applied project costs, not the awarded sum, which can turn a quoted "5%" into an effective third of what actually lands in your account. Grants charges a flat monthly fee, you keep the cheque, and the structural and language wins are about 80% of what a senior consultant brings. This is software, not Rechts- or Steuerberatung, and no tool or consultant can promise you the grant. Before signing with anyone, read our guide to negotiating consultant fees. Pick a consultant when the stakes are eight figures or the process is genuinely beyond your capacity; pick us for the rest.

EU jurisdiction

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

Grants runs on servers we manage, 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. Förderberatungen / agencies'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 Förderberatungen / agencies: EU comparison

	Ours Grants	Theirs Förderberatungen / agencies
Hosted in Germany		Depends
Cost on a €139,600 EXIST award	~€100/yr	~€20,000
Fee charged on… Award vs applied project costs	Flat - no % at all	Often applied costs
Upfront fee, win or lose		€2k-€8k common
Takes on small grants
PTJ language conventions
Pre-submission criteria check
Hands-on writing for you
Builds in-house grant skill for next round
Works for rival applicants in the same call	Never	Possible
You keep authorship + IP of the text		Negotiable
Available evenings + weekends

When to pick which

Pick Grants when

Your award would be in the €60k-€200k range and a percentage fee is hard to swallow.

You want to keep the writing - and the IP - inside your own team.

You apply to multiple grants per year and need a tool, not a single engagement.

You want to build in-house grant-writing muscle, because the next round will come.

The consultant fine print scares you: % on applied costs, upfront fees, or auto-renewal clauses.

Pick Förderberatungen / agencies when

The application is Forschungstransfer Phase II or larger and a senior consultant's review is worth six figures.

You have zero capacity to write yourself and prefer to delegate the entire process.

Your grant runs through complex tax integration (e.g. Forschungszulage Phase 2) where roughly 60% of the real work happens after the Bescheinigung.

A consultant has genuine insider context on your specific reviewer panel or the politics of a multi-partner Verbund.

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