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 Microsoft Word

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

Word

Finn GlasCo-Founder + Engineering

·December 17, 2025·

1 min read

If your reason for moving off Microsoft Word 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

Word is excellent at one thing: any document. The trade-off for that flexibility is zero structure when you sit down to write an EXIST Gründerstipendium Ideenpapier. Grants ships the section structure (Idea, Innovation, Market, Team, Plan) reviewers actually open the PDF looking for - plus deadline tracking, status, and the 4-week revision window that gets a "zur Nachbesserung zurückgegeben" Antrag back into the awarded pile.

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. Microsoft Word'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 Microsoft Word: EU comparison

	Ours Grants	Theirs Microsoft Word
Hosted in Germany		Microsoft 365: depends on your setup
Section structure for EXIST/IGP
Deadline + status tracking
PTJ language conventions
Multi-author live editing
Works fully offline
Existing reviewer template files

When to pick which

Pick Grants when

You are writing an EXIST, Forschungstransfer, IGP, or BW Pre-Seed application and want the structure handed to you.

Two or three co-founders edit the same draft and you do not want to rename final_v17_finalfinal.docx.

Submission deadline matters. The 4-week revision window after a Nachbesserungs-Aufforderung matters more.

Pick Microsoft Word when

You already have a reviewer template Word file from your university and the reviewer expects exactly that file.

You write the entire application offline on long flights.

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