Is Sourdough Tracker 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. Sourdough Tracker 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 Sourdough Tracker 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.

Sourdough Tracker

Compare

Sourdough Tracker: the EU alternative to A paper notebook

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

EU alternative

Comparison

Notebook

Finn GlasCo-Founder + Engineering

·January 8, 2026·

1 min read

If your reason for moving off A paper notebook is data sovereignty, the comparison gets simpler. Sourdough Tracker 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

Paper has a real advantage: nothing more honest than a flour-dusted page that's been near the dough. It also has a real disadvantage: you can't search it, you can't sort it, you can't filter feeds vs bakes, and the photos live in a separate device. Sourdough Tracker is the digital equivalent that respects what paper does well - one-tap entries, no nag, your data stays yours - while adding what paper can't: search, filtering, photos in line with the entry they belong to, and per-starter sharing. Many bakers happily run both.

EU jurisdiction

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

Sourdough Tracker 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. A paper notebook's setup is the variable - if their primary infra is US-based, the CLOUD Act applies regardless of what their privacy page claims.

Sourdough Tracker vs A paper notebook: EU comparison

	Ours Sourdough Tracker	Theirs A paper notebook
Tactile + flour-friendly
Searchable across entries
Photos inline with entries
Sortable feed vs bake feed
Survives a coffee spill		Maybe
Share one starter w/ a friend
Battery / wifi required	Yes

When to pick which

Pick Sourdough Tracker when

You bake more than once a month and want patterns to emerge.

Photos matter to you - and you want them on the same page as the entry.

You want a friend (or your kitchen co-baker) to see one starter without the rest.

Pick A paper notebook when

You want zero screens at the kitchen counter, period.

You bake once or twice a year as a hobby and don't need search.

EU-jurisdiction questions

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

Start with Sourdough Tracker

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