The European ChatGPT alternative: what you keep

Yes, there is a European alternative to ChatGPT, and for most everyday work you lose less than you would expect. Mistral Vibe (the chat app formerly called Le Chat) comes closest feature for feature, with web search, voice and image generation. Union AI is a narrower product: a chat on open-weight models where every inference runs inside the European Union, for €13 a month, or €11 a month billed yearly. With either one you keep chat, file uploads, web search, memory across chats and an API. With Union AI you give up voice and image generation, and that trade is most of the decision.

This post goes through it feature by feature, as of September 2026. It is honest about where we lose, because a comparison that only lists our wins is an advert.

Is there a European ChatGPT?

Not from OpenAI. There is no "ChatGPT EU" edition that runs the model in Europe for ordinary subscribers. What exists is a small set of European chat products, each built differently.

• Mistral Vibe is made by Mistral AI, a French company that trains its own models. It is the closest thing to a like-for-like ChatGPT replacement, with a free plan and a Pro plan.
• Union AI runs open-weight models, meaning models whose trained weights are published so anyone can run them on their own hardware. We run them on infrastructure inside the EU, which is what lets us promise that your prompts are processed there.
• Business platforms that host models for companies, usually sold per seat and through a sales call rather than a sign-up page.

A longer ranked list is in the best European AI chatbots in 2026. This post is narrower: you use ChatGPT today, and you want to know what survives the move. If your team runs on Claude, Copilot or Gemini instead, see European alternatives to Claude, Copilot and Gemini.

What do you keep when you leave ChatGPT?

More than people think. Most of what people do in ChatGPT is text work: drafting an email, rewriting a paragraph, summarising a PDF, explaining a concept, checking some code. That work carries over to any decent European alternative, because it is what language models are for.

Here is the full picture, feature by feature. ChatGPT's column describes the Plus plan, the one most people pay for.

Feature	ChatGPT Plus	Mistral Vibe	Union AI
Chat and writing	Yes	Yes	Yes, four model tiers
File upload	Yes	Yes	Yes: PDFs, text files, images
Reading images	Yes	Yes	Standard tier only
Web search	Yes	Yes, limited on Free	Yes, with numbered sources, when you turn it on
Memory across chats	Yes	Yes	Yes, off until you turn it on
Custom GPTs or assistants	Custom GPTs	Agents	One tailored assistant, about 100 templates
Voice	Yes	Pro and up	No
Image generation	Yes	Yes	No
Company documents	Projects and connectors	Libraries	Add-on, €20 a month; files from Google Drive and OneDrive
API	Separate, from OpenAI	Separate, from Mistral	OpenAI-compatible, prepaid credit
Where inference runs	United States by default	Check Mistral's subprocessor list	Inside the European Union

The ChatGPT and Vibe rows come from their published plan pages as of September 2026, and both change often. Our own row comes from the product itself, including the parts we do not have.

Chat, writing and long documents

This is the bulk of the work, and it carries over cleanly. Union AI's chat includes four tiers: Lite for quick answers, Standard as the default, Long context for documents up to a million tokens, and Pro for heavy reasoning and code. A token is the unit a model reads, roughly three quarters of a word. A million of them is a whole case file or a mid-sized codebase in one prompt. The chat answers in the language you write in, and you can pick the tier per message.

Files and images

You can attach PDFs, text files and images. PDFs and text become text the model reads. Images are the catch: only the Standard tier reads images. If you send a screenshot to Pro, the answer tells you it cannot see it and suggests switching to Standard. That is a limit of the open-weight models we run today, not a policy.

Web search, with sources

Turn on Search in the chat and the answer draws on current web pages, with a numbered source after each claim that rests on one. Search stays off until you switch it on. How it works matters for privacy: our own model, inside the EU, turns your message into one short search query, and only that query goes to Linkup, a French search provider. Your conversation and your files never do. Linkup may process queries outside the EU, which is why search is a switch and not the default. The details are on the subprocessors page.

Memory across conversations

ChatGPT can remember facts about you from one chat to the next. Union AI can too, once you turn Memory on; it is off by default. It keeps short facts, such as your role or how you like answers written, skips sensitive topics like health or politics unless you ask it to remember them, and lists every fact in Settings, where you can edit, delete or pause them. It is never used in a team's shared folders.

The API

If your team calls ChatGPT from its own scripts, that carries over too. Union AI's API speaks the OpenAI format, so switching is mostly a matter of changing the base URL and the key. The details are in what an OpenAI-compatible API means. The API is paid from prepaid credit per token; the chat is a plan. Those are two separate things.

What do you give up?

With Union AI, two features, plus the very top end of model quality. Be honest with yourself about which of these you actually use, because that decides whether the switch works.

Voice and image generation

Union AI is text in, text out. No voice conversations, no generated pictures. If you draft LinkedIn visuals in ChatGPT or talk to it in the car, you need a second tool for that, or a broader alternative like Vibe.

The frontier model

This one applies to every open-weight alternative. For most everyday tasks the gap between a good open-weight model and GPT is small. On the hardest reasoning problems, the closed frontier models from the US are still ahead. Pretending otherwise would be the kind of overclaim this site exists to avoid. The models behind each tier, and their licences, are listed on the AI transparency page.

The switch works when your ChatGPT habits are text work and search. It hurts when your habits are voice and pictures.

Which of your ChatGPT features carry over?

Feature grids are easy to read and hard to apply to yourself. So tick what you actually used in ChatGPT last week, not what you might use one day, and see how much survives the move.

If most of your ticks land on "Yes", the move costs you little. If voice or image generation is on the list and it matters, either pick an alternative that has it or keep a small tool on the side for that one job.

Why look for a ChatGPT alternative in the EU at all?

Because of where your prompts are processed, and what happens to them afterwards. Your prompts are often the most sensitive text you write all day: a customer complaint, a contract clause, a draft appraisal.

Storage in Europe is not processing in Europe

OpenAI offers data residency in Europe for ChatGPT Enterprise, Edu and API customers. That sounds like the answer, but read the scope. As Computerworld reported in November 2025, the residency covers data at rest, while the default location for model inference remained the United States. Your stored chats can sit in Europe while the model that reads them runs elsewhere. Check OpenAI's current terms for your plan, because this moves.

Inference is the moment the model reads your prompt and writes the answer. The machine doing that has your prompt in memory, in plain text. That is the row to read on any subprocessor list.

Jurisdiction is a separate question

A server in the EU run by a company with a US parent is still reachable by US law. We cover that in detail in what the CLOUD Act means for EU-hosted data. It applies to us too, in part: our hosting, database and payments involve companies with a US parent, and we say so on the subprocessors page. What we can promise is narrower and firmer. All AI inference runs on infrastructure inside the European Union, your prompts and outputs never go to the United States or China, and the models are not trained on customer data.

GDPR is about how you use it

A European tool does not make your processing compliant by itself, and ChatGPT is not automatically unlawful either. The conditions (a processing agreement, no training on inputs, a retention answer) are covered in is ChatGPT GDPR compliant, and what to demand from any vendor is in what makes an AI chatbot GDPR-compliant for business. A European alternative mostly shortens one conversation: where the data goes.

How much does a European ChatGPT alternative cost?

Usually less than ChatGPT Plus. Here are the list prices for the plans most people compare, as of September 2026.

Plan	Price per month	Notes
ChatGPT Go	About €8	Cheaper tier, lower limits, may show ads
ChatGPT Plus	About €23 incl. VAT	The everyday paid plan
ChatGPT Pro	$100 or $200	Five or twenty times the Plus usage
Mistral Vibe Pro	€14.99	Web search, voice, image generation
Union AI chat	€13 excl. VAT (€11 billed yearly)	2,000 messages, all four tiers

Union AI's plan is one plan. It includes all four tiers and 2,000 messages a month. An answer from the Pro tier counts as five messages, because it costs about five ordinary ones to run. The first 5 messages are free and ask for no card. Teams add seats at €10 each, and the company knowledge add-on, which answers from your own documents and names the file it used, is €20 a month. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.

Mistral publishes its own plans on the Mistral pricing page, including a Team plan at €24.99 per user. For a side-by-side of every major chat subscription converted to euros, VAT included, read AI chatbot prices compared in euros.

Which European alternative fits you?

It depends on what you ticked above. Roughly:

1. You use ChatGPT for voice and pictures. Mistral Vibe is the closer match. Check its subprocessor list for where your prompts are processed, the same way you would check ours.
2. You use ChatGPT for text work, and where your prompts go matters. Union AI fits. Inference runs inside the EU, the models are open-weight and named per tier, and nothing you type trains a model.
3. You need both. Plenty of people keep a European chat for work material and a separate tool for voice or images. Nothing about a customer contract needs a generated picture.
4. You are moving a whole team. Then the question is less about features and more about rollout: saved prompts, a short usage policy, a week of overlap. That process is in how to switch your team from ChatGPT.

For a broader look at the four ways to buy AI in Europe, including where we lose, see European AI providers compared. If you mainly want a chatbot that answers well in German, Dutch or French, the European AI chatbot guide covers the language side.

How to test a ChatGPT alternative in one week

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

1. List your last twenty ChatGPT prompts. Your history is right there. Sort them into text work, search, voice and images.
2. Rerun five text prompts in the alternative. Pick real ones: an email you sent, a document you summarised, a piece of code you fixed. Compare the answers side by side.
3. Copy your custom GPTs across as instructions. A custom GPT is mostly its instructions. Paste them into a saved prompt or assistant and see whether the output holds up.
4. Try one long document. Attach the longest PDF you work with. This is where a million-token tier earns its place.
5. Note what you missed. After a week, write down each time you reached for a feature that was not there. If the list is short, switch. If it is long, you have your answer too.

Union AI's first 5 messages are free, which is enough for steps two to four. After that the plan is €13 a month, cancellable monthly, or €11 a month if you pay for the year, and every message in it is processed inside the European Union and never used to train a model.