Best European AI chatbots in 2026, compared

The best European AI chatbot in 2026 depends on what you need it for. Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat) is the most capable and the only one on its own European-trained models. Proton Lumo is the privacy pick. Infomaniak Euria is the best free one. Langdock suits companies that want GPT, Claude and Gemini behind one EU-hosted workspace. And Union AI, which is us, is the cheapest paid plan that runs only open-weight models on infrastructure inside the European Union, at €13 a month, or €11 a month billed yearly.

Every fact and price below was checked against the vendors' own pages as of September 2026. Where we could not verify something, we left it out.

How we picked and ranked these chatbots

A chatbot made the list if it is a general assistant you can sign up for today, and it is built or run by a European company, or it is so often called European that leaving it out would be odd. Then we scored each one on five questions:

1. Where does it run? The machine that reads your prompt, not where the website is hosted.
2. Who operates it? A European region run by a company with a US parent is still reachable by US law. We explain why in the CLOUD Act and EU-hosted data.
3. Does it train on your chats? By default, not after you find the right toggle.
4. What does it cost in euros? List price, the entry paid plan.
5. Is there an API? If your team will build on it later, this matters now.

What makes a chatbot European in the first place is a separate question, and we answer it in what a European AI chatbot is. This post is the buyer's list. If you are buying models through an API rather than a chat product, read European AI providers compared instead.

The best European AI chatbots at a glance

Prices are the entry paid plan as listed by each vendor in September 2026. VAT treatment differs per vendor, so check the checkout page for your country.

Chatbot	Made by	Where prompts run	Entry paid plan	Models	Who it is for
Mistral Vibe	Mistral AI, France	EU by default, some features use subprocessors outside the EU	Pro, €14.99 a month excl. VAT	Mistral's own	Power users who want the strongest European model
Proton Lumo	Proton AG, Switzerland	Proton-controlled servers in Europe	Lumo Plus, €12.99 a month	Open weight (Qwen, GLM, Apertus)	Privacy-first individuals
Infomaniak Euria	Infomaniak, Switzerland	Infomaniak's own servers in Switzerland	Free; my kSuite+ from €20 a year	Open weight (Mistral, DeepSeek, Llama and more)	Anyone who wants a free, no-account assistant
Langdock	Langdock, Germany	EU hosting for most models, some global	€25 per user a month excl. VAT	GPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral and more	Companies that want US frontier models with admin controls
HuggingChat	Hugging Face, United States	Routed across many inference providers	Free; PRO $9 a month	100+ open-weight models	Tinkerers trying many open models
Union AI	Union AI, European Union	Infrastructure inside the EU	€13 a month excl. VAT (€11 billed yearly)	Open weight, four tiers	Individuals and small teams wanting a cheap, EU-only chat

Now the same list, but ranked by what you care about. Switch requirements on and off and watch the order change.

Which European AI chatbot is best for each kind of user?

Best overall: Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat)

Mistral Vibe is the most complete European assistant. Mistral AI is a French company that trains its own models, and in May 2026 it renamed Le Chat to Vibe, adding a work mode that can use connected apps and a coding mode that runs code in sandboxes. If you searched for "Mistral Le Chat vs" something, this is the same product under a new name.

• Price: a free plan, Pro at €14.99 a month excluding VAT, Team at €24.99 per user a month excluding VAT, Enterprise on request. Pro also includes $15 a month of API credit.
• Where it runs: Mistral's help centre says your data is hosted in the European Union by default, but that it can be temporarily transferred outside the EU to subprocessors, depending on the features you use.
• Training: on the standard plans you are opted in by default and can switch it off. Team admins can switch it off for everyone. Enterprise is opted out by default.

Where it beats the rest: capability, features and connectors. It is the only chatbot on this list running a European lab's own flagship models, and it has a coding agent built in. Where it loses: it costs more than Lumo or Union AI, and the training default is the wrong way round for anyone pasting in client work. Flip that toggle on day one.

Best for privacy: Proton Lumo

Proton Lumo comes from the company behind Proton Mail. Its whole pitch is that Proton cannot read your chats. According to Proton's Lumo privacy page, it runs only on servers Proton controls, uses open-weight models (currently Qwen 3.5, GLM 5.3 and Apertus 1.5, plus image models), and does not use your chats for training. Stored chat history is protected with zero-access encryption, meaning it is encrypted so that only you can read it, not Proton.

• Price: free, or Lumo Plus at €12.99 a month, or €119.88 a year (€9.99 a month). A business seat, Lumo Professional, is listed at €14.99 per user a month.
• Where it runs: Proton says Europe. Proton moved Lumo's servers from Switzerland to Germany in 2025 over concerns about planned Swiss surveillance rules.
• API: none official. People have been asking for one on Proton's feedback forum.

Where it beats the rest: no chatbot here makes a stronger privacy promise, and Proton has a long track record of keeping it. Where it loses: no API, so your team cannot build on it, and the models are open-weight mid-sized ones, not a frontier model. Proton AG is Swiss, not EU, which matters to some procurement teams and not at all to others.

Best free option: Infomaniak Euria

Euria is the assistant from Infomaniak, a Swiss hosting company. You can use it in a browser or the mobile apps without making an account. Infomaniak's Euria guide says it runs exclusively on its own servers in Switzerland, uses open-source models including Mistral, Whisper, DeepSeek, Llama and Granite, and never uses your data for training.

• Price: free. Heavier personal use comes with my kSuite+, from €20 a year according to Infomaniak. Businesses get it through kSuite.
• API: Infomaniak sells a separate, OpenAI-compatible AI API, billed per token.

Where it beats the rest: price. A free, account-free assistant hosted by the company that owns the datacentre is hard to argue with. Where it loses: the free tier has limits on projects and conversation length, and it is less capable than Mistral Vibe on hard tasks.

Best for companies that want GPT and Claude: Langdock

Langdock is a Berlin company that sells a chat workspace for teams. The difference from everything else on this list: it gives you models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral and others in one place, with EU hosting marked per model on its models page. Some newer models are only available in global regions.

• Price: €25 per user a month excluding VAT for a Business seat, €99 for a heavier Business Max seat, with a 7-day free trial. There is also an API, billed per token.

Where it beats the rest: if your team needs the frontier models from the US labs and your IT department wants admin controls and a European vendor to contract with, Langdock is the obvious fit. Where it loses: the models themselves come from US companies, so an EU region does not remove the jurisdiction question. It is also the most expensive per seat, and there is no free plan.

Best for trying open models: HuggingChat

HuggingChat is Hugging Face's free chat app. Since late 2025 it uses a router called Omni that picks a model for each prompt from more than a hundred open-weight models. It is on this list because people keep calling it European. Hugging Face has French founders and a big presence in Paris, but it is a US company. The routing runs across a list of inference providers that includes European clouds like OVHcloud and Scaleway alongside many US ones.

• Price: free, with more usage through Hugging Face PRO at $9 a month.

Where it beats the rest: choice. Nothing else lets you compare so many open models in one window. Where it loses: you cannot count on your prompt staying in Europe, so keep it for experiments, not for client data.

Best cheap EU-only plan: Union AI

This is us, so weigh this section accordingly. Union AI runs open-weight models, and every inference runs on infrastructure inside the European Union. The chat plan includes four tiers: Lite (gpt-oss-120b), Standard (Qwen 3.6), Long context (DeepSeek V4 Flash, a million-token window) and Pro (GLM 5.2). The model and licence behind each tier are on our AI transparency page.

• Price: €13 a month excluding VAT for 2,000 messages, all four tiers, attachments and long documents included, or €11 a month if you pay for the year. Monthly, cancel any time. The first 5 messages are free, no card needed. Details on the pricing page.
• Training: never, on any plan.
• API: yes, a separate OpenAI-compatible API paid from prepaid credit. It is independent of the chat plan.

Where we win: the lowest monthly price for a chat that only runs open-weight models inside the EU, and we publish exactly who processes what on our subprocessors page. Where we lose: there is no ongoing free plan like Euria's. Mistral has stronger features and a coding agent. Langdock gives you frontier US models, which we do not. And we do not claim that no data leaves the EU: our hosting, database and payment providers have US parent companies, and that page says so.

Which European chatbots are not on this list, and why?

A few names come up often but did not fit.

Aleph Alpha built its reputation on German sovereign AI, but its PhariaAI platform is sold to companies and governments, not as a chatbot you can sign up for. Canadian AI company Cohere announced in April 2026 that it would merge with Aleph Alpha, so watch that space if you are an enterprise buyer.

DeepL is excellent and European (it is based in Cologne), but DeepL Translator, DeepL Write and DeepL Agent are translation, writing and task tools, not a general chat assistant. If translation is most of what you do, look there first.

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot with EU data residency are not European products, even when a business plan stores data in Europe. We cover that trade-off in European alternatives to Claude, Copilot and Gemini and in the European alternative to ChatGPT.

What should a business check before choosing one?

A chatbot for yourself is a one-minute decision. A chatbot for a team needs four more answers, in writing.

1. A data processing agreement. Under the GDPR, a business that puts personal data into a chatbot needs a processing agreement with the provider. Ask for it before the trial ends.
2. A full subprocessor list. Look for the row that runs the model. "Hosted in the EU" often means the website. We explain how to read one in where your prompts go.
3. A training clause that says no by default. Mistral's standard plans show why "you can opt out" is not the same as "we don't".
4. An exit path. An open-weight model and an OpenAI-compatible API mean you can move later without rewriting everything. The mechanics are in switching in three lines.

The full checklist, including retention periods and what to ask your provider, is in what makes an AI chatbot GDPR compliant. And if you are unsure whether customer data may go into a chatbot at all, work through the GDPR decision tree for customer data first.

A chatbot is only as European as the machine that reads your prompt, and the company that owns that machine.

Is a European AI chatbot as good as ChatGPT?

For most everyday work, close enough that you will not notice. Drafting emails, summarising documents, rewriting a paragraph in German, answering a question about a spreadsheet: the open-weight models behind Lumo, Euria and Union AI handle that well, and Mistral's own models handle it better still.

For the hardest reasoning and the longest agent tasks, the top models from the US labs are still ahead. That is why Langdock exists, and why we would not tell you otherwise. The practical test is not a leaderboard. It is your own ten hardest prompts, run on two of these chatbots side by side. Most of them have a free tier or free messages, so the test costs nothing.

Price matters too. A seat of ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro costs more than any paid plan on this list except Langdock. We compare every plan in euros, with VAT, in AI chatbot prices compared.

How to pick in five minutes

1. If your chats must stay private from the provider itself: Proton Lumo.
2. If you want free and have no account: Infomaniak Euria.
3. If you want the most capable European model and features like coding and connectors: Mistral Vibe, with training switched off.
4. If your company needs GPT, Claude and Gemini with admin controls: Langdock.
5. If you want a cheap monthly plan that only runs open-weight models inside the EU, with an API for later: Union AI.

Once you have picked, moving a whole team takes a plan, not just a sign-up link. We wrote down how in switching your team from ChatGPT to a European AI.