DMA governs gatekeeper fairness and contestability; DSA governs online safety and platform accountability.
Use this comparison to structure responsibilities across product, policy, trust & safety, privacy, and platform engineering.
Structured answer sets in this page tree.
Cited legal and guidance references.
DMA and DSA are often discussed together because both regulate large digital platforms in the EU - but they solve different problems. The DMA (Regulation (EU) 2022/1925) targets contestability and fairness for core platform services operated by designated gatekeepers. The DSA (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065) targets illegal content, transparency, and systemic risk management for online intermediaries and platforms. Many companies need both compliance programs at once.
DMA: competition/fairness law for designated gatekeepers and their core platform services (CPS), with product and access obligations (Articles 5-7) and a 6-month compliance clock after CPS listing.
DSA: online safety/accountability law for intermediaries and platforms, with obligations around notice-and-action, transparency, risk assessment/mitigation (for very large platforms), and governance.
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DMA scope hinges on gatekeeper designation and the CPS list (intermediation, search, social networking, OS, browsers, virtual assistants, cloud, ads, etc.).
DSA scope hinges on the role as an intermediary service and, for higher tiers, platform size and systemic impact (including very large online platforms/search engines).
DMA obligations are often implemented in platform infrastructure: choice screens, default settings, third-party app distribution, ranking neutrality, data portability, and interoperability interfaces.
DSA obligations are often implemented in trust & safety systems: reporting, moderation workflows, transparency reporting, ad transparency, user redress, and risk controls.
DMA enforcement is tied to gatekeeper conduct and measurable obligations; penalties include turnover-based fines and periodic penalty payments to compel compliance.
DSA enforcement is tied to content governance and systemic risk outcomes; the operational focus is often audits, reporting, and risk mitigation.
The best combined program avoids duplicated governance by separating shared controls (documentation, evidence, change control) from domain-specific controls (ranking and access vs content moderation).
Use a single evidence library with different "views" for DMA and DSA reporting, and align escalation paths so product changes don't break compliance.