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 subsid.ai

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

EU alternative

subsid.ai

Finn GlasCo-Founder + Engineering

·May 15, 2026·

1 min read

If your reason for moving off subsid.ai 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

subsid.ai is a smart, narrow tool: generative AI trained on successful Forschungszulage and ZIM applications that drafts large chunks of your text for you. They claim to handle ~90% of the application. For exactly those two programmes (Forschungszulage + ZIM), if your goal is to ship a first draft fast and you're comfortable editing AI output, the free tier is genuinely useful. Grants is a broader bet: a full bilingual workspace covering EXIST, EXIST Forschungstransfer Phase I + II, IGP, KMU innovativ, BMBF Verbundprojekt, Horizon EIC, MSCA, ERC, NSF, plus 90+ regional competitions. The editor is section-structured rather than chatbot-style; reviewer-language coaching is inline; the 4-week revision window has its own dedicated workflow. Pick subsid.ai if your only grant is Forschungszulage or ZIM and you want a draft quickly. Pick Grants if you have a multi-year, multi-programme funding strategy.

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. subsid.ai'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 subsid.ai: EU comparison

	Ours Grants	Theirs subsid.ai
Cross-programme reuse of chapters
Forschungszulage drafting
ZIM drafting
EXIST Gründerstipendium structured editor
EXIST Forschungstransfer Phase I + II
IGP / KMU innovativ / BMBF Verbund / Horizon / ERC
Free tier with AI generation
Section-structured editor (LaTeX-backed)
Bilingual EN + DE		DE only
Hosted in Germany

When to pick which

Pick Grants when

Your funding stack includes EXIST or EXIST Forschungstransfer or anything outside the Forschungszulage / ZIM pair.

You want a workspace that carries your text from one application to the next, not a one-shot generator.

You need EU programme support (Horizon, ERC, MSCA, NSF).

You want English + German parallel drafting (international team or bilingual reviewer pool).

Pick subsid.ai when

Your only funding instruments are Forschungszulage and/or ZIM, with no plan to apply elsewhere.

You want a first draft generated fast and you're comfortable heavy-editing AI output.

You don't need a long-term workspace or cross-programme text reuse.

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