European Alternatives to Proctorio
Looking for a European alternative to Proctorio? Proctorio, Inc. lists a Scottsdale, Arizona address in its terms, and its US agreements are governed by Delaware law with arbitration in Maricopa County, Arizona; customers outside the US are referred to Proctorio GmbH in Frankfurt under German law, while the company itself is American. Its service records exam sessions through a browser extension, which makes the contracting entity and data location central to any institution's privacy review.
The European tools below range from live human proctoring in Ireland to open-source assessment platforms in Luxembourg, and each is run by a company in the EU, EEA, UK or Switzerland.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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1
European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA, the UK, Switzerland or Israel, and processes customer data in Europe or Israel. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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2
Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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3
Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
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11 European Alternatives to Proctorio
TestReach
Live human proctoring and exam delivery from a Dublin vendor
WISEflow
University assessment platform with lockdown and proctoring add-ons
TestWe
Online exams with AI marking and screen, webcam and audio proctoring
Inspera
Modular assessment suite with secure browser and AI-flagged proctoring
Smowl
Modular proctoring that adds to Moodle, Canvas and other LMSs
TAO
Open-source assessment platform built on QTI and LTI standards
ProctorExam
Amsterdam proctoring service with screen, webcam and phone camera
TestVision
Dutch SaaS test system with invigilator monitor and Safe Exam Browser link
Surpass Assessment
Certification-grade item banking, adaptive tests and test centre delivery
Exam.net
Teacher-built exam tool using exam keys and three security levels
Testportal
Self-service test maker with published plans and tab monitoring
Key takeaways
- Proctorio, Inc. is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, and its US terms are governed by Delaware law, while customers outside the United States are routed to Proctorio GmbH in Frankfurt under German law.
- Proctorio states that exam recordings can be stored in the US, Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Singapore or India depending on the institution's location.
- Proctorio describes itself as a software company, not a proctoring services company, so live human supervision is usually the institution's own responsibility.
- TestReach in Dublin is the European option that supplies its own employed proctors as part of the exam contract.
- TAO in Luxembourg is the only tool on this page with a free open-source edition (GPL-2.0), and it has no native video proctoring, so it replaces the exam engine rather than Proctorio's camera layer.
Why people leave Proctorio
Proctorio is an automated exam-monitoring service that started in 2013 and, by its own count, has proctored more than 300 million exams. Institutions meet it as a browser extension that watches the candidate through webcam, screen, audio and web traffic, with the exam administrator choosing which of those channels and which lockdown rules apply. The company contracts as Proctorio, Inc. in Scottsdale, Arizona, and as Proctorio GmbH in Frankfurt for customers outside the United States.
The reasons procurement teams look past it are mostly about the recordings, not the software.
A proctoring session is a video of a student at home, often with the room visible, and a university has to answer for where that video lives and who can be compelled to produce it.
Proctorio says recordings are stored in the region that matches the institution and that only the institution holds the decryption keys, which is a real answer. It is still an answer from a US-headquartered provider, running on Azure, and some data protection officers prefer to remove the question altogether.
There is also a fit question that has nothing to do with law. Proctorio is built around automated monitoring and flags, with the institution doing its own live supervision under its Be Your Own Proctor model. A certification body that wants trained invigilators supplied in the contract, a school that wants a plain lockdown browser, or a ministry that wants to host the exam engine itself will find that the European field offers each of those more directly.
- The contracting entity depends on where you sit Proctorio's terms split by customer: the US terms are governed by Delaware law with arbitration in Maricopa County, Arizona, while customers elsewhere are directed to Proctorio GmbH in Frankfurt and German law. That is better than a single US contract, but the group and its parent structure remain American. A European tool means the vendor, its owner and its courts all sit in the same legal area as your students.
- Recordings can sit in eight regions The privacy notice lists the places recordings may be stored: the US, Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Singapore or India, chosen by the institution's location. Europe is one option among several, and the cloud behind it is named as Azure. Institutions that have to document one fixed location in a data protection impact assessment will want that list to be shorter than it is.
- Transfers rest on the Data Privacy Framework For EEA and Swiss users, Proctorio states that it may transfer information to the United States and relies on its certification under the EU-US, UK and Swiss-US Data Privacy Frameworks. Those frameworks have been challenged before, and a school that signed a transfer impact assessment on one legal basis has to revisit it whenever the basis moves. A processor in your own jurisdiction removes the transfer step.
- Software only, supervision is your job The terms say plainly that Proctorio is a software company, not a proctoring services company. Live proctoring is mostly delivered through Be Your Own Proctor, meaning your staff or a contractor you hire, and only in limited cases does Proctorio supply people. Buyers who want the supervision itself bought and staffed by the vendor have European options that do exactly that.
What you have to replace, not just match
Replacing Proctorio is not one swap, because the product bundles three jobs. The first is capture: webcam, screen, audio, desk scan and web traffic recording.
The second is control, the long list of switches such as blocking new tabs, disabling the clipboard, forcing full screen and detecting virtual machines. The third is review: flags, a timeline and annotation so an academic conduct officer can decide a case. Some European tools cover all three, others only the first two, and a few only control.
Then there is what sits around the extension. Proctorio connects to your learning management system, and your exams, quizzes and gradebook live there, not in the proctoring service. A European proctoring layer such as Smowl or ProctorExam keeps that arrangement and replaces only the monitoring. An assessment suite such as WISEflow, Inspera or TestWe replaces the LMS quiz as well, which gives you better control but means moving question banks and retraining examiners.
Finally, Proctorio is also selling content protection and authorship checks: WebSweep for finding leaked questions, ScreenBlock against screenshots, Behavior Tracker and AuthorProof for written work. No single European tool in this list reproduces that whole menu. Decide which of those extras you actually switched on last year before you build the shopping list.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | TestReach | Dublin, Ireland | Not published on the pages checked; demo on request | EU (Ireland) |
| #2 | WISEflow | Aarhus, Denmark | Annual site licence plus tiered per-student fee; amounts not published | EU (Denmark) |
| #3 | TestWe | Paris, France | Quote after a demo booking | EU (France) |
| #4 | Inspera | Oslo, Norway | Demo on request; no public price list | EEA, not EU (Norway) |
| #5 | Smowl | San Sebastian, Spain | Custom quote, answered within 48 hours per the vendor | EU (Spain) |
| #6 | TAO | Capellen, Luxembourg | Free Community Edition; cloud tiers priced by user volume, amounts not seen | EU (Luxembourg) |
| #7 | ProctorExam | Amsterdam, Netherlands | See website; the shop page was not readable | EU (Netherlands) |
| #8 | TestVision | Wilp, Netherlands | Not published; demo on request | EU (Netherlands) |
| #9 | Surpass Assessment | Saltaire, United Kingdom | Not published on the pages checked | United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #10 | Exam.net | Danderyd, Sweden | School licence on quote; 30-day free trial | EU (Sweden) |
| #11 | Testportal | Babimost, Poland | From $35 per month (US dollars on the page); custom plan from $159 per month | EU (Poland) |
How each alternative compares to Proctorio
Best for: Awarding bodies and professional associations running scheduled, high-stakes certification sittings
Where Proctorio sells software and leaves the watching to you, TestReach staffs it. The proctors are described as the company's own employees, recruited and monitored by TestReach, who authenticate the candidate, ask for a view of the room and supervise live while the session is also recorded. Authoring, delivery, marking and reporting live in the same application.
The company states that the service has run since 2014 and that hosting is on AWS inside the EU, with an uptime guarantee of 99.95 percent or better. Candidates reach a helpdesk by phone, email or chat. The terms and privacy policy text look dated, with a liability cap of one hundred dollars for site use and a mention of Privacy Shield, so a lawyer should read them.
What TestReach does better than Proctorio
- Supplying the supervisors inside the contract
- Handling a candidate whose camera fails mid-exam
- Keeping authoring, marking and proctoring in one system
Where TestReach is a step down from Proctorio
- Cost per sitting once humans are involved
- Automated review of thousands of daily sessions
- A published price list
Standout against Proctorio. It is the only tool here that puts its own employed invigilators on the call.
Best for: Universities moving assignments and invigilated exams onto one platform instead of an LMS quiz plus Proctorio
WISEflow from UNIwise in Aarhus replaces the combination of LMS quiz, lockdown and Proctorio with one platform. Its pricing page lists Core, Advanced and Premium plans: written assignments, file hand-in and auto-marked questions are in all three, the lockdown browser starts in Advanced, and Device Monitor, which flags second screens, virtual machines and screen sharing, is included in Premium.
Proctoring comes as add-ons. Advanced proctoring compares the face with an enrolled image and detects voice, and live proctoring puts a human invigilator on the session with a chat module. UNIwise states that data is held in Ireland and Germany on AWS and publishes a trust centre. The fee model is a site licence plus a tiered per-student fee, and the amounts are not published.
What WISEflow does better than Proctorio
- Marking, rubrics and hand-in in the same product as the exam
- Hosting stated as Ireland and Germany
- Originality checking alongside proctoring
Where WISEflow is a step down from Proctorio
- Corporate or certification use
- Visible pricing
- Being a lighter add-on when you only need monitoring
Standout against Proctorio. Its plan ladder lets a university switch proctoring on only for the sittings that need it.
Best for: French-speaking universities, certifiers and recruiters running exams at volume with recorded evidence
TestWe is the closest European echo of Proctorio's recorded approach: identity verification, then recording of screen, webcam and audio, with an asynchronous replay for quality control. The difference is that the exam itself is authored and marked in the same product, including oral and multimedia answers, AI question generation and assisted marking of open responses.
The vendor shows 2024 figures such as 128,552 proctored sittings, which are its own numbers, and claims GDPR and CNIL compliance. The company is confirmed in the French register as TestWe SAS, created in 2014. Its legal notice and privacy pages returned errors when we checked, so hosting location and processors could not be read, and documentation is French first.
What TestWe does better than Proctorio
- Oral and multimedia answer types
- A French entity registered in an official register
- Combining recruitment, certification and higher-education use
Where TestWe is a step down from Proctorio
- English documentation
- Published hosting details
- Live human supervision, which the pages do not describe
Standout against Proctorio. It couples AI-assisted marking of open answers with recorded proctoring from a Paris vendor.
Best for: Large universities and awarding bodies buying browser, proctoring and originality checks as separate modules
Inspera offers live and recorded proctoring, in its own assessment platform or inside an LMS. AI flags moments such as a candidate leaving the frame or using a second device, and staff review a timeline with colour-coded severity. The company states that a human, not the technology, makes the final academic conduct decision, which is a stance Proctorio also takes in its privacy notice.
Inspera AS is in Oslo, so it is EEA rather than EU. Its security statement says the Assessment Cloud is hosted entirely on AWS within the European Union and lists ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus. Its published sub-processor list includes US providers such as Zendesk, Databricks and TrackJS, so EU hosting does not mean zero US involvement.
What Inspera does better than Proctorio
- Choosing browser, proctoring and originality as separate modules
- Integrated item banks and authoring
- Documented ISO 27001 certification
Where Inspera is a step down from Proctorio
- Lightweight rollout for a small institution
- A zero-US-processor claim
- Public pricing
Standout against Proctorio. Its Integrity Browser, proctoring and originality checker can be bought independently.
Best for: Institutions that keep Moodle, Canvas or Blackboard and want only the proctoring swapped out
Smowl is the nearest structural match to Proctorio as a bolt-on: it does not author or mark exams and plugs into the LMS you already run, with separate pages for Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard and D2L Brightspace. Its computer-monitoring module, SMOWL CM, logs how the exam was completed and can flag generative AI tools, virtual machines and copy and paste, with the institution deciding which applications are allowed.
Automated and deferred modes exist next to SMOWL LIVE, where a proctoring team watches the session and can chat with the examinee. The company in San Sebastian is named in its privacy policy, and its site publishes sections on GDPR, FERPA, CCPA and the EU AI Act. Pricing follows user numbers and supervision type, and recording locations and processors were not stated on the pages we read.
What Smowl does better than Proctorio
- Switching supervision level exam by exam
- Naming generative AI tools in its monitoring
- Keeping your LMS exactly as it is
Where Smowl is a step down from Proctorio
- Published hosting details
- Fixed pricing
- A candidate setup with no desktop application
Standout against Proctorio. One Spanish contract can mix automated, deferred and live proctoring across different exams.
Best for: Ministries, universities and test publishers that want open standards and the option to self-host the code
TAO does not try to be a Proctorio clone. The Community Edition, free under GPL-2.0, covers item authoring, delivery, scoring and psychometric reporting, with QTI and LTI support that the vendor presents as the answer to lock-in. Delivery includes session monitoring and lockdown control, and camera supervision comes from partner integrations instead.
Open Assessment Technologies S.A. in Capellen, Luxembourg, is named as the controller in the privacy policy, although the contact page also lists a Delaware corporation and a Madrid office. Cloud hosting is on AWS and Google Cloud with the region not stated, and cloud tier amounts were not seen. Self-hosting means your own patching, security and support.
What TAO does better than Proctorio
- Running the code on your own servers
- Open standards and exportable items
- National-scale and psychometric assessment programmes
Where TAO is a step down from Proctorio
- Native video proctoring
- Turnkey simplicity for a small team
- Stated cloud region
Standout against Proctorio. It is the only tool here you can install and modify yourself, free, under an open licence.
Best for: Test organisers who keep their exam system and want recorded two-angle evidence added through API or LTI
ProctorExam is a proctoring service rather than an exam platform, which makes it a direct swap for the monitoring half of Proctorio. The candidate installs a screen-sharing Chrome extension, shows an ID, and sets up the webcam and, optionally, a smartphone as a second camera. The rules cover lighting, being alone, no headphones and no talking, and the audio is analysed for suspicious behaviour.
The vendor states that it acts for the test organiser, always signs a data processing agreement and encrypts data with AES-256, and that AWS and Google Cloud store the data in EU data centres. Documentation covers API version 3 and LTI. The public site is brief, there is no price list, the legal form is not shown, and the extension requires Chrome on a laptop or desktop.
What ProctorExam does better than Proctorio
- Two-camera view of the desk and room
- A stated data processing agreement for every customer
- Plugging into an existing exam system by API
Where ProctorExam is a step down from Proctorio
- Public pricing
- Supporting tablets as the main device
- Authoring or marking exams
Standout against Proctorio. Its smartphone second camera shows the desk from a different angle than the laptop webcam.
TestVision
Dutch test cycle system for invigilated exams, using Safe Exam Browser instead of cameras
Best for: Dutch and Flemish schools and examination bodies running supervised digital exams in a room
TestVision from Teelen B.V. in Wilp starts from the invigilated exam room, not from the home webcam. Candidates log in with a one-time ticket number and password, the invigilator sees a status monitor of each candidate's progress, and irregularities such as a double login show up immediately. Answers are written to the server as the candidate works.
It links to Safe Exam Browser, or to a browser you bring, with permitted sites whitelisted in advance. That is lockdown, not camera proctoring, and the pages checked did not describe remote proctoring at all, so remote exams would need a partner. It offers API, LTI and single sign-on such as SURFconext, with every function included and no limit on candidates. Hosting and prices are not published.
What TestVision does better than Proctorio
- Invigilator view for on-site digital exams
- No limits on candidates or sittings
- SURFconext sign-in in Dutch education
Where TestVision is a step down from Proctorio
- Remote proctoring
- English-language material
- Published hosting and pricing
Standout against Proctorio. Every function is included for every customer, with no limit on candidates or sittings.
Surpass Assessment
British item-banking platform with test centres and an online proctoring service
Best for: Certification bodies that deliver through test centres and remotely from one item bank
Surpass is an assessment platform first. Item banking, test assembly, adaptive testing and psychometric reporting come with delivery on desktops, laptops, tablets, bring-your-own devices or paper, and the company runs a network of approved test centres plus online proctoring that integrates with its test driver. It replaces Proctorio only if you also want to replace your testing engine.
BTL Group Limited, trading as Surpass Assessment, is in Saltaire in the United Kingdom, which is adequacy-covered rather than EU. The sub-processor list shows Azure hosting in the UK for customers outside North America and in the USA for North American customers, and the policies are shared with a US sister company. Proctoring detail on the pages checked is thin, so ask for a demo.
What Surpass Assessment does better than Proctorio
- Psychometric depth and adaptive testing
- Paper and test-centre delivery next to remote
- UK hosting for non-North American customers
Where Surpass Assessment is a step down from Proctorio
- Visible proctoring detail
- A hosting setup free of US-parented clouds
- Public pricing
Standout against Proctorio. It delivers the same item bank on screen, on paper and through test centres.
Best for: Schools and universities running teacher-led exams on a school-wide licence
Exam.net is the lightest replacement for Proctorio's lockdown side. Students need no account, only an exam key, and native apps for iOS, macOS and Chromebooks serve high-security tests, with Safe Exam Browser supported. Lower-stakes exams run in a normal browser and open-book exams can switch security off, while teachers get real-time monitoring, chat and background cheat detection.
The licence is school-based with unlimited use and a 30-day trial that opens for the whole school without rolling into a paid plan. Teachiq AB in Danderyd is the contracting entity in Europe, and a separate US entity exists for US institutions with Californian law. There is no camera or microphone proctoring on the pages checked, and price and hosting location are not stated.
What Exam.net does better than Proctorio
- Setup effort for a classroom exam
- School-wide unlimited licensing
- Anonymised marking and auto-marking rules
Where Exam.net is a step down from Proctorio
- Camera or audio evidence
- Published pricing
- Stated hosting location
Standout against Proctorio. Students sit an exam with only an exam key, with no account or extension to install.
Best for: Trainers, teachers and small companies that need certificate-ready tests at a visible price
Testportal is the budget end of this page, and it is honest about what it lacks: no video or audio proctoring today, with an AI-driven proctoring solution announced as coming soon. Integrity rests on randomised question sets, blocked back-navigation, server-side timing, a set number of attempts and Honest Respondent Technology, which watches tab movement and can lock access after too many tab leaves.
Its pricing page lists Standard at $35 a month for 30 results, Pro at $79 for 300, Max at $129 for 3000 and a custom plan from $159, each with a 14-day trial, in US dollars. Testportal Sp. z o.o. in Babimost, Poland, states that its infrastructure is based on Microsoft Azure and that the customer owns the test data; the Azure region is not stated.
What Testportal does better than Proctorio
- Price transparency
- Setup time for a one-off certification test
- Microsoft Teams app and API access
Where Testportal is a step down from Proctorio
- High-stakes remote exams
- Euro pricing
- Large cohorts with result caps
Standout against Proctorio. It is the only tool here that prints every plan price on its pricing page.
What actually breaks when you switch
The first thing that breaks is the exam history. Proctorio recordings, flags and annotations belong to your institution, and appeals can arrive months after a sitting. Agree a retention and export plan before you cancel, because Proctorio states that it cannot decrypt the recordings itself, so you cannot ask the vendor to hand over a readable archive in a hurry. Keep the old tenant live for as long as your conduct procedures require.
The second is the candidate experience. Students used to the Proctorio extension will meet a new installer, a new ID flow and in some tools a second device. ProctorExam asks for a smartphone as a second camera, Smowl's computer monitoring needs a desktop application, and Exam.net's high-security mode uses native apps. Run a mock exam with real devices and a helpdesk before the first assessed sitting, and budget a new contract period for the LMS connector too.
Can we keep Proctorio and still satisfy a strict European privacy review?
Often yes, with conditions. Proctorio publishes a sub-processor list, an EU-US Data Privacy Framework certification and a German entity for non-US customers, and it states that recordings are encrypted so that only the institution can open them. A review that accepts a US-headquartered processor with those safeguards can close. A review that requires every processor and its owner to be European cannot, because the group is American and the cloud provider named is Azure.
The practical test is the questions your own data protection officer already asks. Where is the recording stored for our region, who holds the keys, which sub-processors can see metadata, and what happens if a US authority sends a request? Ask Proctorio for written answers per exam setting, then ask the same of two European vendors, so that you compare answers and not impressions.
Is a European tool as strict at catching cheating as Proctorio?
Strictness is a setting more than a property of the vendor. Proctorio's strength is the number of switches: its own page lists dozens, from hardware and virtual machine detection to forced full screen and periodic desk scans. Smowl, ProctorExam, TestReach and Inspera cover recording, identity checks and browser control, but few of them publish a feature list as granular.
Where European tools differ is in the philosophy. Several rely on live or reviewed human supervision rather than on automated flags, and some drop the camera for lockdown and monitoring altogether. If your complaints from students concern false flags or intrusive room scans, that difference can be an advantage rather than a loss.
Which one to pick
If you want people instead of flags, pick TestReach. If you want one suite for the whole university, compare WISEflow and Inspera, and ask both for named hosting regions. If you only need to replace the camera layer and keep your LMS, Smowl and ProctorExam are the direct swaps, and TestWe is the choice when your teaching language is French.
If the exam is not high stakes, Exam.net and Testportal give you lockdown or tab monitoring at far lower cost and with far less personal data. If sovereignty over the code is the requirement, TAO is the only option that lets you run it yourself. And if your institution is happy with Proctorio's German entity, its Data Privacy Framework certification and regional storage, staying is a legitimate decision: this page is for the buyers whose review comes out differently.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on what you use Proctorio for. TestReach from Ireland is the closest match if you want trained human proctors supplied with the platform, and WISEflow from Denmark or Inspera from Norway suit universities that want an assessment suite with lockdown and proctoring modules. If you only want a monitoring layer on top of Moodle or Canvas, Smowl from Spain and ProctorExam from the Netherlands are built for that job.
Its privacy notice says recordings are stored on its cloud provider's servers in a region chosen by the institution's location, and the list includes Europe next to the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Singapore and India. It also names Azure as its cloud service provider. Ask for the specific region in your contract, because the notice describes the options, not your configuration.
TAO, TestVision, Exam.net and Testportal do not offer native webcam or microphone recording on the pages we checked. TAO and TestVision connect to proctoring partners or Safe Exam Browser, Exam.net uses three security levels and teacher monitoring, and Testportal detects when a candidate leaves the test tab. They fit low-stakes or supervised sittings better than high-stakes remote exams.
TAO from Luxembourg publishes a Community Edition under GPL-2.0 that you can install on your own servers, with QTI and LTI support. It covers item authoring, delivery and scoring, but it is not a proctoring product, so you would pair it with a partner for camera supervision. Running it yourself also means your own hosting, patching and support.
Several do. Smowl has dedicated pages for Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard and D2L Brightspace, ProctorExam documents an API and LTI, and WISEflow lists LTI 1.3 among its features. TestVision and TAO also advertise LTI. Test the specific launch flow in a sandbox course before signing, because LTI support on a feature list does not guarantee your gradebook round trip.
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