---
title: "Europe Data Residency for Atlas Embedding and Reranking"
description: "MongoDB announced the public preview of data residency in Europe and the United States for the Embedding and Reranking API Service (ERAS) on Atlas. This introduces a Geography, a named group of cloud regions, as a processing boundary for inference, distinct from the region-level cluster provisioning. Requests to a Designated Service are processed and logged only within the chosen Geography, with a 10% price premium for scoped processing. The Europe Geography initially covers EEA regions, and the US Geography covers US regions, with plans to expand. This approach supports data sovereignty goals for European organizations while maintaining a global endpoint for workloads without residency requirements."
---

# Europe Data Residency for Atlas Embedding and Reranking

[MongoDB](https://yomu.fyi/company/mongodb) · Sep 1, 2026

**Type:** Announcement

## Summary

MongoDB announced the public preview of data residency in Europe and the United States for the Embedding and Reranking API Service (ERAS) on Atlas. This introduces a Geography, a named group of cloud regions, as a processing boundary for inference, distinct from the region-level cluster provisioning. Requests to a Designated Service are processed and logged only within the chosen Geography, with a 10% price premium for scoped processing. The Europe Geography initially covers EEA regions, and the US Geography covers US regions, with plans to expand. This approach supports data sovereignty goals for European organizations while maintaining a global endpoint for workloads without residency requirements.

## Context

MongoDB Atlas users building AI-powered search with ERAS need to meet European data residency and sovereignty requirements. The update adds a Geography-scoped processing boundary for embedding and reranking inference, complementing existing Atlas security and compliance features.

## Approach / What changed

MongoDB introduces Geographies as a second boundary beyond cloud provider regions. Users select a Geography (Europe or US) for Designated Services, and requests are processed and logged only within that Geography. Enforcement uses API key scoping, with resource policies to restrict key creation and flag out-of-scope keys. The general endpoint remains default, with a 10% price premium for scoped processing.

## Takeaways

- Geography scoping is a processing boundary, not a data retention guarantee; it does not cover in-country processing or air-gapped deployments.
- API keys and endpoints must align in scope; an unscoped key cannot be used for explicit EU inference, and vice versa.
- The Europe Geography initially covers EEA regions, and the US Geography covers US regions, with the set of regions within a Geography subject to change.

## FAQ

### What is the difference between a Geography and a Region in Atlas?

A Geography is a named group of cloud regions, like Europe or the United States, that serves as a processing boundary for ERAS. A Region is a specific cloud provider location. Geographies are used because GPU-accelerated compute is not evenly distributed, and a Geography-level boundary can be held as capacity moves between regions.

### How does MongoDB enforce that requests stay within a selected Geography?

Enforcement uses API key scoping. The API key's scope is fixed at creation and must match the endpoint's Geography. Resource policies can restrict key creation to a chosen Geography, and keys outside a newly applied policy are flagged. The scope is checked twice, against the key prefix and stored attributes, to prevent misrouting.

### What happens if a request cannot be served within the selected Geography?

The request is designed to fail rather than fall back to another Geography. This is stricter than common industry patterns that allow opting into cross-boundary processing. This ensures that traffic sent to the Europe endpoint is served in Europe or not at all.

**Tags:** [AI Search](https://yomu.fyi/topic/ai-search), [Compliance](https://yomu.fyi/topic/compliance), [Data Residency](https://yomu.fyi/topic/data-residency), [MongoDB Atlas](https://yomu.fyi/topic/mongodb-atlas)

- Source: [MongoDB](https://www.mongodb.com/company/blog/product-release-announcements/europe-data-residency-for-atlas-embedding-reranking)
- Source URL: https://www.mongodb.com/company/blog/product-release-announcements/europe-data-residency-for-atlas-embedding-reranking
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-20T08:16:41.508Z

[Read original post](https://www.mongodb.com/company/blog/product-release-announcements/europe-data-residency-for-atlas-embedding-reranking)