Define geographical scope of Copilot Servers

[carlos-garcia-flw]

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Hi Team

Our organization is based in Europe and most of our customers are located also in Europe.

One of our customers agrees with the usage of Copilot to help us to create our solution but he poses a requirement.

• "AI Servers must be located in EU. Data can not leave EU"

We have enable many options on the Copilot configuration and I wonder if there is a way to define the scope for that.
Maybe, there is something on the "Trust Center" about that and you could point to this.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Carlos.

[ShubhamGajera]

Hi Carlos,

That's a great question, and it's an important consideration for EU-based organizations subject to data residency and GDPR compliance.

As of now, GitHub Copilot does not offer regional (e.g., EU-only) data residency controls. When using Copilot, data such as code snippets and telemetry may be processed in data centers located outside the EU, including in the United States.

Key Points:
->GitHub Copilot relies on cloud infrastructure, and Microsoft (GitHub’s parent company) may process data in various global regions.
->GitHub's Trust Center and Copilot Privacy Statement provide details on how user data is handled.
->Copilot does not currently support restricting inference or processing to specific regions like the EU.

If EU data residency is a strict requirement, it might be best to:
->Avoid using Copilot for customer-specific or confidential code.
->Use Copilot only in sandbox or isolated environments.
->Or, consider alternatives that offer EU-region control (though they may not be as integrated with GitHub).

You can also reach out to GitHub Sales or Support directly for more formal guidance if your organization needs a binding data processing agreement (DPA) or Enterprise options.

[carlos-garcia-flw]

Shubham

Thank you so much for your detailed answer including the links to the Trust Center.

Despite the fact that, today, that's a service GitHub doesn't provide, I'd like you to take it into consideration as a Product Improvement for the future. It won't be the first time USA decides to put some limits on the exports of services (I'm think of the encryption key on the 90's) 😉

Again, Thank you for your support.

Greetings.

[ShubhamGajera]

Shubham

Thank you so much for your detailed answer including the links to the Trust Center.

Despite the fact that, today, that's a service GitHub doesn't provide, I'd like you to take it into consideration as a Product Improvement for the future. It won't be the first time USA decides to put some limits on the exports of services (I'm think of the encryption key on the 90's) 😉

Again, Thank you for your support.

Greetings.

You're very welcome, Carlos — and thanks for your thoughtful note!
You're right, regional server support is becoming more important, especially with evolving data regulations. I agree it's a great suggestion for future product improvements.
Appreciate the historical reference too — well said!

[Bryan-Snapp-Technology-Kenya]

I know this is late, but @carlos-garcia-flw, having local servers in the EU does not solve the data sovereignty issue at all. Your data is at risk in the EU if a US based company has access to it, because of the 2018 Cloud Act. The correct response to this statue is to run your own inference. You can do that on MS Azure, or AWS, or OCI, GCP, or other providers, but you must have control of your data (i.e encrypted at rest and in transit), and you lose that if you use inference as a service because of the Cloud Act.

[TariqKingCoder]

GitHub Copilot runs on Microsoft Azure servers, and right now you cannot force all Copilot traffic to stay only in the EU.

• GitHub Enterprise Cloud does offer EU data residency for repository content and metadata, so your code and related data can be stored in EU data centers.
• However, Copilot’s AI inference may still use servers outside the EU.
• The best step is to check GitHub’s Trust Center and contact GitHub Support to confirm what parts of Copilot can be restricted to EU regions.

👉 In short: repository data can stay in the EU, but Copilot’s AI processing may not be limited to EU servers yet. For strict compliance, you’ll need GitHub’s official confirmation.