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 Gründerplattform

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

EU alternative

Gründerplattform

KfW

Finn GlasCo-Founder + Engineering

·May 15, 2026·

1 min read

If your reason for moving off Gründerplattform 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

Gründerplattform is an excellent free tool. Funded by KfW + BMWE (so taxpayer-supported, no business model in your way), implemented by BusinessPilot GmbH. It walks any founder step-by-step through a complete business plan with competitor analysis, financial planning, free expert consultations, and online seminars. For 80% of founders - especially those writing a bank-loan plan or a generic Gründungs-Businessplan - it's the right tool and we'd recommend it without reservation. Grants is for the other 20%: founders going for innovation grants (EXIST, IGP, KMU innovativ, BMBF, Horizon) where the document needs a specific chapter structure, reviewer-language coaching, and the 4-week revision window workflow that PTJ uses. Gründerplattform's generic Businessplan-Struktur doesn't map to the EXIST Ideenpapier - you'd have to restructure the whole document. We map natively.

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. Gründerplattform'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 Gründerplattform: EU comparison

	Ours Grants	Theirs Gründerplattform
Multi-application chapter reuse across grants
Price	Subscription	Free (publicly funded)
Generic business-plan structure for bank-loan applications
EXIST Ideenpapier seven-section chapter structure
IGP / KMU innovativ / BMBF Skizze native structure
Horizon EIC + ERC structured workflow
PTJ / DLR reviewer-language inline coaching
Free expert consultations + community + seminars

When to pick which

Pick Grants when

Your funding target is EXIST, EXIST Forschungstransfer, IGP, KMU innovativ, BMBF Verbundprojekt, or any Horizon / ERC / NSF programme.

You'll write 2-3+ grant applications in 24 months and want chapter reuse + version control across them.

You need PTJ / DLR-PT reviewer-language coaching and the 4-week revision workflow.

Pick Gründerplattform when

Your funding plan is a Hausbank loan + KfW StartGeld - a generic Businessplan-Struktur is exactly what the bank wants.

You want free expert consultations and community access (these are genuinely valuable, and we don't replace them).

Cost matters most and you're happy to map the document onto an EXIST/IGP structure yourself if you later go for innovation grants.

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