European alternatives to Claude, Copilot and Gemini

A European alternative to Claude, Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini is an AI assistant whose model runs on servers inside the European Union, operated by a company outside US jurisdiction. It carries over the everyday chat work: drafting, summarising, translating and answering questions about documents you hand it. It does not carry over the deep integration with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and for the hardest reasoning the US frontier models are still ahead. Union AI is one such alternative: open-weight models, inference inside the EU, €13 a month or €11 billed yearly.

That is the short version. The longer one depends on which assistant you use today, because Claude, Copilot and Gemini each handle European data differently, and each one leaves a different hole when you move away from it. All vendor facts below are as of September 2026, from each vendor's own documentation.

Why look for a European alternative at all?

Because region is not jurisdiction. All three vendors are US companies. Microsoft, Anthropic and Google can each offer processing in European datacentres, in some products and on some plans, and that genuinely matters for the GDPR. But a US parent company can be compelled under the CLOUD Act to hand over data it controls, wherever it sits. We go through what that law does and does not reach in the CLOUD Act and EU-hosted data.

The second reason is simpler: control over the details. With a US assistant, whether your prompts stay in the EU depends on your plan, your admin settings and which model the product picks for a given feature. That is a lot to get right, and it can change with a product update.

An EU datacentre tells you where the machine is. It does not tell you whose law can reach it. Those are two questions, and a European alternative answers both.

If you are here for ChatGPT, that has its own write-up on the European ChatGPT alternative. This post covers the other three.

What is Microsoft Copilot, and can you replace it?

Microsoft Copilot (the product formerly called Microsoft 365 Copilot) is Microsoft's AI assistant for business. It is two things at once: a chat, and a layer across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams that reads your organisation's data through Microsoft Graph, the index of your mail, files, calendar and chats.

The chat part is replaceable. The Graph part mostly is not, and that is the honest headline for anyone running on Microsoft 365.

Where does Copilot send your data?

Microsoft's own documentation on data, privacy and security for Microsoft Copilot says that for EU customers Copilot is an EU Data Boundary service. The EU Data Boundary is Microsoft's commitment to store and process customer data for its enterprise cloud services inside the EU and EFTA. For Copilot, Microsoft states that EU traffic stays inside the boundary for model processing. Prompts, responses and Graph data are not used to train foundation models.

That is a real commitment and it deserves credit. It also has documented edges:

• Web search goes to Bing, outside the boundary. When Copilot searches the web, it sends a generated query to the Bing search service. Microsoft's page on web search in Copilot states that the EU Data Boundary and the DPA do not apply to those queries, and that Microsoft acts as a controller for them. The query is a few words, not your whole prompt, but it is derived from it.
• Anthropic models are excluded. Copilot can run on Claude models, with Anthropic as a Microsoft subprocessor. Those models are currently excluded from the EU Data Boundary. In the EU and EFTA they are off by default, and an admin has to switch them on.
• Multi-Geo tenants are out of scope. Microsoft notes that customers who bought Multi-Geo Capabilities are not in scope for the EU Data Boundary, even with an EU tenant.
• The parent is Microsoft Corporation, a US company. The boundary governs location, not jurisdiction.

What does a European alternative keep from Copilot?

Everything that is chat: you paste or attach something and ask for a result. Drafting an email, rewriting a policy in plain language, translating a contract clause, summarising a 90-page tender. With Union AI, attachments and long documents are part of the plan, and the Long context tier holds up to a million tokens, so a whole case file fits in one prompt.

Answers from your own company documents carry over partly. Union AI's Company knowledge add-on (€20 a month) lets you upload documents, and the chat answers from them and names the file it used. You can also pick files straight from OneDrive or SharePoint in the chat. Each file is fetched when you pick it: nothing is indexed live, and SharePoint permissions do not carry over. You choose what goes in.

Web search carries over too. Turn on Search and the answer cites numbered sources. Like Copilot, Union AI sends a generated query, not your prompt, to a search provider: Linkup, a French company that may process queries outside the EU. Our subprocessors page says so.

What do you lose if you leave Copilot?

This is the part to be straight about. You lose:

1. Copilot inside the Office apps. No side panel in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. You copy text between windows.
2. Teams meeting recaps. Nothing listens to your meetings.
3. Questions about your own work graph. "What did Anna decide about the Q3 launch?" needs access to mail and chats that a separate tool does not have.
4. Microsoft Purview over AI chats. Retention policies and eDiscovery for Copilot interactions live in your Microsoft tenant. A separate app sits outside them.

For a Microsoft 365 company, that list is why "replace Copilot" is often the wrong goal. "Move the sensitive chat work out of Copilot" is usually the right one.

What is Claude, and where does Anthropic process your data?

Claude is Anthropic's family of AI models and the chat app at Claude.ai, sold as Free, Pro and Max plans for individuals and Team and Enterprise plans for business. It is strong at writing, long documents and code. Many people who move to it do so for quality, and that is a fair reason.

Does Claude keep data in the EU?

Not on Anthropic's own platform. Anthropic's data residency documentation lists two inference geos for its API: global, where inference may run in any available geography, and us. Workspace storage is available in the US only. There is no EU option on the first-party API as of September 2026.

You can reach Claude models in EU regions through AWS Bedrock and Google Cloud, where the endpoint decides the region. That is a route for developers building on the API. It does not change where the Claude.ai app your team logs into processes a prompt.

Two more facts matter for a business decision:

• Training depends on the plan. Since Anthropic's 2025 consumer terms update, Free, Pro and Max users choose whether their chats are used to train models. Team and Enterprise plans fall under the commercial terms, which that change did not touch.
• The parent is Anthropic, a US company. Same jurisdiction question as Microsoft.

What carries over from Claude, and what does not?

Writing, analysis and long-document work carry over. Web search carries over, with numbered sources, but there is no research mode. Projects with reference files map partly onto Company knowledge. Code help carries over partly: the Pro tier (GLM 5.2) handles code well in the chat, but there is no equivalent of Claude Code or its agent tooling. Image input is partial too, because only the Standard tier reads images.

For developers, the switch is an API change. Union AI's API is OpenAI-compatible, so code written against the Anthropic SDK needs a different client, not just a new key.

What you lose is Claude at its best. On the hardest reasoning tasks, the closed frontier models are still ahead of the open-weight models we run. We would rather you hear that from us than find it out yourself.

What is Google Gemini, and can it stay in the EU?

Google Gemini is Google's AI model family and assistant. For business it comes in two shapes: the Gemini app, and Gemini features built into Gmail, Docs, Sheets and the rest of Google Workspace.

Where does Gemini process your data?

Google has gone further than Anthropic here, on its top plans. Gemini features inside Workspace apps gained data regions support in June 2025 for Enterprise Plus customers and the Assured Controls add-ons. In June 2026 Google extended that to the Gemini app: admins can now configure EU storage and processing on Enterprise Plus and Frontline Plus, down to the organisational unit.

So on the right plan, with the right settings, Gemini can process in the EU. On lower Workspace editions and personal Google accounts there is no such control. Google's Workspace privacy hub also notes that data region settings do not apply to Gemini Notebook. And the parent is Alphabet, a US company.

What carries over from Gemini?

The same pattern as Copilot, with Google's names. Drafting, summarising and long documents carry over. Answers from Drive files carry over partly: you can pick files from Google Drive in the chat, but nothing searches your Drive for you. Web search carries over, through Linkup rather than Google. You lose Gemini in Gmail, Docs and Sheets, and image generation and voice, which Union AI does not offer.

Pick your current assistant below to see the full split, and where the data is processed on each side.

Claude, Copilot and Gemini side by side

	Microsoft Copilot	Claude	Google Gemini	Union AI
EU processing	Yes for EU tenants, via the EU Data Boundary	No EU option on Anthropic's own platform	Yes on Enterprise Plus and Frontline Plus, if configured	Inference inside the EU on every plan
Documented exceptions	Bing web queries, Anthropic models, Multi-Geo	EU only via Bedrock or Google Cloud APIs	Lower editions, Gemini Notebook	Hosting, database and payments have US parents; web search queries may be processed outside the EU
Parent company	United States	United States	United States	European
Suite integration	Deep, via Microsoft Graph	None built in	Deep, in Workspace	None; you can pick files from Google Drive and OneDrive
Trains on business data	No	No on Team and Enterprise	No without permission	No, on any plan

The last column is ours, so read it with that in mind. The row we would not skip is the exceptions row. Our own is on the subprocessors page: inference runs in the EU, the website, database and payment provider involve companies with a US parent, and web search queries, when you turn search on, may be processed outside the EU. We do not claim that no data leaves the EU.

Should you replace your assistant or run both?

For most companies on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, run both. Replacing the suite assistant costs you real features that no separate chat can give back. Keeping it for everything means your most sensitive text follows the same path as everything else.

A split that works:

1. Keep the suite assistant for suite work. Meeting recaps, inbox questions, the side panel in Word. That is where Copilot and Gemini earn their licence.
2. Move sensitive chat work to a European tool. Customer data, HR files, legal drafts, anything you would not want under US jurisdiction. Whether customer data can go into a chatbot at all is a separate question, answered step by step in can you put customer data into an AI chatbot.
3. Write the split into your AI policy. People should not have to guess which tool gets which text. The post on not being allowed to use ChatGPT at work covers how that conversation with IT tends to go.
4. Check the contract, not just the region. A processing agreement, a no-training clause and a subprocessor list. What to look for is in what makes an AI chatbot GDPR compliant.

If you use Claude on its own, with no suite behind it, a full swap is more realistic, because there is less integration to give up. What you trade is peak model quality for EU inference and a European operator.

How to test a European alternative in an afternoon

Do not decide on a demo. Decide on your own work.

1. Collect five real tasks from the last month that you did with Claude, Copilot or Gemini. A real email, a real document, a real question.
2. Run them on the European tool. Union AI's first 5 messages are free and need no card.
3. Score each one: as good, good enough, or not good enough. Be honest about the third bucket.
4. List what you used that is not chat. That list is what you keep the US assistant for, or what you decide to live without.

If the result holds up, the Union AI chat plan is €13 a month excluding VAT, or €11 a month if you pay for the year, with 2,000 messages and all four model tiers. Extra seats are €10 each. The API is separate, priced per token and paid from prepaid credit. The fuller comparison of European options, including where each one loses, is in the best European AI chatbots and European AI providers compared. The step-by-step for moving a team is in how to switch from ChatGPT, and it works the same for Claude, Copilot or Gemini.

What we claim, and what we do not

Every prompt you send to Union AI is processed on infrastructure inside the European Union, and never used to train a model. That holds on every plan, without an admin setting.

We do not claim to replace Copilot's place in Microsoft 365 or Gemini's place in Workspace. We do not claim to match Claude on the hardest problems. And we do not claim that no data leaves the EU, because our hosting, database and payments run with companies that have a US parent. The detail is in where your prompts go.

A European alternative is not a clone of the US assistant. It is the part of the work you would rather keep in Europe, done well enough that you stop missing the rest.