ChatGPT alternative under GDPR: Le Chat vs ChatGPT

Le Chat is now called Vibe: prices, storage location, processing on behalf of a controller and training at Mistral and ChatGPT compared, with sources and dates.

If you are looking for a ChatGPT alternative with GDPR considerations in mind, you will soon come across Mistral. On 8 September 2026 the company announced a funding round of EUR 3 billion, and on 28 September 2026 it opened a site in Munich. Neither announcement says anything about data processing in the product. For that you have to look at the help, pricing and contract pages.

This post puts Le Chat and ChatGPT side by side, using the same criteria for both: plans and prices, storage location, processing on behalf of a controller, training, retention and administration. A note on the name first: Mistral renamed Le Chat to Vibe on 12 August 2026. We keep Le Chat in the title because that is what people search for, and write Vibe in the text when we mean the current product.

As of 6 October 2026

TL;DR

Both vendors document their controls: the data processing agreement, storage location, training and retention are on the vendors' own pages. Whether your processing is permitted is something you decide for your use case, not the vendor.
The differences are in the detail: according to its help centre, Mistral hosts in the EU by default, but for Vibe accounts outside Enterprise it trains on inputs by default until you opt out. OpenAI does not train on Business and Enterprise data by default, but names data residency in Europe only for new Enterprise and Edu workspaces.
Prices as of 6 October 2026: Vibe Team USD 24.99 per user per month excluding taxes (€29.74 including taxes, Germany selected), ChatGPT Business USD 20 per Standard seat per month with annual billing. There is no clear winner here.

What the choice is about

When you ask about an alternative to ChatGPT, check four things besides the model: where data is stored, on what contractual basis the vendor processes it, whether it is used for training, and which administration features your IT team gets.

The legal framework is the same for both vendors. If you have a service provider process personal data on your behalf, Art. 28(3) GDPR requires a contract or another legal instrument that binds the processor and sets out, among other things, the subject matter, duration, nature and purpose of the processing (GDPR on EUR-Lex). Both vendors offer a contract for this. Which data you enter and whether that is permitted for your company is for you to assess, if necessary with your data protection officer.

We therefore describe documented controls and do not assess compliance. Prices, features and data rules change quickly, so every statement carries its date.

Le Chat and ChatGPT in brief

Le Chat is now called Vibe. According to the Mistral help centre (article of 12 August 2026), Vibe is the new name for Le Chat, with account, plan and conversations carried over, at the same address, chat.mistral.ai. Vibe combines an assistant for work (Vibe Work, formerly Le Chat) and a coding agent (Vibe Code). The documentation states that Chat and Work have been undergoing a merger into one interface since 22 September 2026: first for Free, Pro and Team accounts, and for Enterprise with a six-month migration window during which the administration chooses the migration date.

ChatGPT is OpenAI's assistant. There are two plans for businesses: ChatGPT Business as a self-service workspace for teams, and ChatGPT Enterprise through sales. Until 29 August 2025, ChatGPT Business was called ChatGPT Team. According to OpenAI, a Standard seat in ChatGPT Business includes access to ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work and Codex, within the usage limits of the plan. More on the plans, and on Copilot, Claude and Gemini, is in the enterprise AI comparison for DACH, on model choice in Which AI is best? and on model prices in the LLM comparison 2026.

Where you stand

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Plans and prices

The table shows what the pricing pages state on 6 October 2026 (Mistral) and in the archive copies of 3 and 4 October 2026 (OpenAI). Currencies and tax details are shown as the vendor states them, with no conversion.

Criterion	Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat)	ChatGPT
Free plan	Free: limited messages and web searches	Free: limited feature set according to the pricing page
Team plan	Team: USD 24.99 per user per month, excluding taxes. With Germany and EUR selected the page shows €29.74 per user per month, including taxes	Business, Standard seat: USD 20 per user per month with annual billing, USD 25 with monthly billing. Premium seat: USD 100 per user per month with annual billing, USD 125 with monthly billing, with five times the usage of Standard
Largest plan	Enterprise: price on request	Enterprise: no list price, contact sales
Minimum size	Not stated on the pricing page for Team	Business: at least 2 seats (Standard or Premium)
Usage beyond the allowance	Additional usage at API prices (PAYG credit) in Pro and Team	Workspace credits in addition to the seat (Business and Enterprise)

For context: on the same page Mistral also lists a Pro plan for individuals (USD 14.99 per month excluding taxes, €17.84 including taxes, Germany selected). OpenAI offers Go, Plus and Pro for individuals. According to the OpenAI pricing page, Go, Free, Plus and Pro are intended for individuals, and Business and Enterprise for companies. That is why we compare the business plans here.

Data: storage location, contract, training

This section is the core of the question. The table summarises what the help and contract pages document.

Criterion	Mistral Vibe	ChatGPT Business and Enterprise
Processing on behalf of a controller	Data Processing Addendum online, version of 27 July 2026. According to the help centre it cannot be signed offline. Under the addendum Mistral also acts as a controller, for training (unless you opt out) and abuse detection, among other things	DPA for ChatGPT Business, ChatGPT Enterprise and the API, concluded through an OpenAI form
Storage location	According to the help centre, in the EU by default. Via the US API endpoint, data is stored in the US. Depending on the feature, data may be sent temporarily to subprocessors outside the EU (standard contractual clauses). Enterprise can switch off some of these features	Data residency for ChatGPT in ten regions according to the OpenAI help centre, including Europe (EEA plus Switzerland), for new Enterprise and Edu workspaces. Business is not named there. Workspace metadata, billing data, logins and data from external integrations may be stored outside the region
Training	Default for Vibe outside Enterprise: inputs and outputs of regular conversations are used for training until you opt out; for Temporary Chat the Vibe documentation names no use for training. Team admins can switch it off for the whole organisation. Enterprise is excluded by default. Thumbs-up or thumbs-down feedback is always used	Default: no training on business data (Business, Enterprise and other plans), unless you have expressly agreed, for example through feedback features
Retention	Zero Data Retention is not available for Vibe Work and Chat, only with pay-as-you-go for stateless API calls and on request, which Mistral reviews at its own discretion. According to Mistral, conversations are typically removed after a short grace period following manual or account deletion; monitoring and legal retention purposes may require additional retention	Admins control retention. According to OpenAI, deleted conversations are removed within 30 days unless otherwise required. For Zero Data Retention the Business help page points to a contractual offering instead of self-service Business; which products and features it covers is something you clarify with sales
Audit reports	SOC 2 Type II as well as ISO 27001 and 27701 according to Mistral, reports via the Trust Center	SOC 2 Type 2 according to OpenAI, details in the Trust Portal

Three notes on how to read this. First, on training: the Mistral help page for Vibe says that users are not excluded by default and can opt out in the settings; on Team, the administration switches it off for everyone. The pricing page lists model training for Free, Pro and Team as "opt-out". The opt-out applies separately to Vibe and to the API (Studio): switching one off does not automatically switch off the other.

Second, at OpenAI the help page names Europe data residency expressly for Enterprise and Edu. For Business we found no statement on this on the pages we checked, so that belongs in your question to OpenAI. In addition there is inference residency in Europe for Enterprise customers with data residency enabled, which keeps GPU computation in the region.

Third, neither vendor rules out all processing outside the chosen region. Both name exceptions: at Mistral subprocessors, at OpenAI metadata and external integrations, among others. Mistral's subprocessors are listed in the Trust Center, where you can subscribe to changes by email.

Features in daily work

Only features documented by the respective vendor are compared, using the same criteria.

Criterion	Mistral Vibe	ChatGPT Business and Enterprise
Assistant for work	Vibe Work: multi-step tasks, scheduled tasks, skills, canvas, project folders	ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work, GPTs, Projects, Apps, Company Knowledge, ChatGPT Agent, Deep Research
Connection to tools	Connectors (beta), custom MCP connectors (beta) in all plans according to the pricing page	Apps and connectors that admins approve per workspace
Coding	Vibe Code for terminal, IDE and web, remote agents from Pro	Codex included in both plans
Team administration	Domain verification, data export, knowledge connectors (according to the pricing page)	Roles, usage overview, spending limits, SAML SSO and domain verification (Business)
Enterprise administration	SAML SSO, audit logs, admin API, custom deployment, white-label (according to the pricing page)	SAML SSO, audit log via the Compliance API, retention control

One ambiguity at Mistral: the help centre names single sign-on and permission management as controls for Team and Enterprise, while the pricing page lists SAML SSO and audit logs only in the Enterprise column. If you need SSO in the Team plan, clarify it before buying. Mistral also offers "Custom deployments": according to the pricing page on your own infrastructure, in the private cloud or on-premises, for Enterprise only. In its announcement of the Munich site, Mistral states that its own models can run on the customer's infrastructure. If you are considering that route, the decision logic is in Self-hosting LLMs versus managed hosting.

What switching means in practice

Before switching, check more than the plan. These points should be clarified beforehand, whichever direction you switch in:

Contract first: conclude the data processing agreement before employees enter real data, and review the subprocessors. At Mistral the addendum applies online; at OpenAI it runs through a form.
Configure the settings: switch off training (at Mistral separately per product, for Vibe and Studio), define retention, approve connectors.
Take stock of what you have: your own GPTs, projects, skills and instructions are work that does not move automatically between vendors. Document them so that you can rebuild them. We found no automatic transfer between the vendors.
Plan for product changes: both vendors change their products continuously, at Mistral most recently the renaming (12 August 2026) and the merger of Chat and Work (22 September 2026).
Update rules and staff enablement: which data may go into which tool belongs in your AI policy. Our free AI policy template has an approval list for tools and data classes.
Pilot with a few people: test with real tasks before you switch everyone.

The AI readiness check shows where your organisation stands today in five minutes.

Decision criteria

The table lists questions you can answer for your decision. It deliberately names no winner.

Criterion	Question for your company	What the sources say
Storage location	Must data be in the EU, and does that apply to storage, computation or both?	Mistral: EU hosting by default, exceptions via subprocessors. OpenAI: Europe residency for new Enterprise and Edu workspaces, inference residency in Europe for Enterprise
Training	Must training on your inputs be excluded from the start?	Mistral: for regular conversations outside Enterprise an opt-out is needed (Temporary Chat excluded according to the documentation), Team admins switch it off for everyone. OpenAI: no training on business data by default
Contract	Which contract form does your legal department need, and can you accept the addendum online?	Mistral: addendum cannot be signed offline. OpenAI: DPA via form
Retention	Do you need Zero Data Retention or only controllable deletion periods?	Mistral: ZDR not for Vibe, API only on request. OpenAI: periods controllable, ZDR according to the Business help page only via a contractual offering, clarify scope with sales
Administration	SSO, audit log, admin API: in which plan, from what size?	See the table above, if in doubt ask sales
Price	What does it cost for your number of users, in which currency, with or without taxes?	Mistral states USD excluding and EUR including taxes, OpenAI states USD per seat
Tasks	Which tasks come first: text, research, coding, agents?	Pilot with real tasks, no benchmark ranking in this post

A three-step approach helps in practice: record your requirements, check both vendors against the same list, then run a pilot for two to four weeks. If you would like a 30-minute conversation about it, book a slot.

FAQ

That cannot be answered in general terms, and we do not assess it. Mistral documents a Data Processing Addendum, EU hosting as the default, statements on SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001/27701, and an opt-out from training. Whether your processing is permitted depends on the data, the purpose and your contract, and is your responsibility. Note that the product has been called Vibe since 12 August 2026.

How much does Le Chat cost for teams?

According to the pricing page on 6 October 2026, the Team plan costs USD 24.99 per user per month excluding taxes. With Germany and EUR selected, the page shows €29.74 per user per month including taxes. Mistral provides Enterprise pricing only on request.

Where does Mistral process the data?

According to the help centre (article of 12 August 2026), in the EU by default. Anyone using the US API endpoint has their data in the US. Depending on the feature, data may be sent temporarily to subprocessors outside the EU, which the Trust Center lists.

We do not answer this in general terms either. For Business and Enterprise, OpenAI documents a DPA via a form, no training on business data without express consent, and SOC 2 Type 2. OpenAI names Europe data residency for new Enterprise and Edu workspaces. Whether that is enough for your case is for you to assess.

Which European ChatGPT alternatives are there?

In this post we only checked Mistral, and we make no statement about other vendors here. A second option is self-hosting open models, which we describe in Self-hosting LLMs versus managed hosting.

Is Mistral better than ChatGPT?

That depends on the task, the data requirements and the price. We name no winner; for your decision we recommend a comparison based on your own tasks. Test both with the same tasks and check the data questions in the table above.

Sources

Mistral pages retrieved on 6 October 2026. OpenAI pages as archive copies: pricing page of 4 October 2026, Business help of 3 October 2026, Enterprise Privacy of 2 October 2026 (page updated on 8 January 2026), data residency help of 29 July 2026 (content confirmed on 6 October 2026 by search).

About the author

Sebastian Lang writes for Sentient Dynamics about AI in business.

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