Over the last week, I’ve been testing Mistral Le Chat to see what exactly sets it apart. I’ve been wondering, in particular, how Le Chat compares to other models, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Is it a real contender or just an experiment? Is the future of AI in Europe? Maybe it is because, apparently, only two weeks since its release, Le Chat has reached a million downloads.
In this article, I’m happy to provide my insights after testing Le Chat. So here's everything you need to know about Mistral's latest AI play and whether it's worth your attention. And if you aren't familiar with some of the concepts I mention in this article, try enrolling in our AI Fundamentals skill track to learn about generative AI.
Quick Background on Mistral
You might not have heard about Mistral until recently, but it was founded in April 2023 by a trio of French AI researchers with backgrounds in Google DeepMind and Meta. Not only was Mistral founded with some of the best researchers in the industry, it also recevied a big funding round (€385 million) in October 2023. Ever since then, I knew Mistral would be worth watching.
What is Mistral Le Chat?
Last summer, we covered Mistral 7B, a 7-billion parameter model that outperformed the larger Llama 2. Then, in the fall, we covered Pixtral 12B, a 12-billion parameter large language model and Mistral's first multimodal one. So Mistral has been busy, but now everyone is talking about the new flagship product, Le Chat.
Le Chat is Mistral’s new AI assistant, designed as a direct competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Unlike Mistral’s previous open-weight models, Le Chat is a hosted AI service that provides users with access to Mistral’s most advanced models via a chat interface. Personally, I think the choice of name - Le Chat - is strong because it makes it very clear what it is: Le Chat is Europe's answer to AI assistants like ChatGPT.
Mistral Le Chat Main Features
What sets Mistral Le Chat apart, exactly? What's missing in ChatGPT that Mistral has covered? In this section, I’ll show you what makes Le Chat unique.
Flash Answers
To me, the most noticeable difference is speed. Le Chat is engineered for speed. It generates up to 1,000 words per second. If that sounds like a lot - it is. So fast, in fact, that Mistral calls this feature Flash Answers, which is something you enable for yourself after signing in and creating an account. Flash Answers are powered by high-performing, low-latency Mistral models and fast inference engines.
Speed matters because it means rapid processing of complex queries and, more importantly, a good user experience. After all, no one likes a chatbot that feels slow.
If you haven’t tried it for yourself, I recommend doing so. It’s very easy to sign up for an account and enable the feature. Ask Le Chat to finish a task that you are working on, like summarizing a document or interpreting some code. It really does give you an answer in, like, half a second.
Multimodal capabilities
Le Chat can handle text generation, code interpretation, document analysis, and image generation. This is something I had come to expect from Mistral since the release of Pixtral 12B, Mistral first multimodal AI model.
What all this means you can rely on a single AI tool to perform what seems like totally different tasks - summarizing a document or creating a picture, for instance. Because it’s versatile like this, you could imagine using Le Chat - and just Le Chat - for your work in business or research, and also for whatever creative projects you have going.
Privacy and compliance
I want to say that Le Chat emphasizes privacy and compliance. Europe is known to have strong privacy laws, after all, most notably GDPR, and Mistral, which is French, operates in that regulatory environment. So Le Chat complies with GDPR and it adheres to EU data sovereignty standards. For this reason, Mistral is seen and will continue to be seen as a trusted solution for enterprise and government users who require strict data protection.
Upload processing and OCR
Mistral Le Chat users can upload images and documents, such as PDFs and text files. Le Chat then uses these uploads and interprets them. Le Chat extracts all the relevant info from these documents or whatever it is you uploaded, and provides, in turn, contextual responses. This feature is a good one for document analysis or image understanding. How it works is that Le Chat employs something called optical character recognition (OCR) technology to convert scanned documents or images containing text into editable and searchable data. Mistral Le Chat uses the best OCR tech in the industry.
Code Interpreter
Le Chat Code Interpreter is the last cool feature I'll talk about. Le Chat users can run Python code (but only Python code for now) directly within the chat. This is going to be helpful if you need to do some quick math in Python or something more serious, like robust data analysis or even some scripting. Le Chat does support the different important Python libraries. With the Code Interpreter, you can execute snippets interactively, receive some feedback, and then refine your scripts. One caveat to know, however: The code is running in a sandbox environment without internet. This means that you cannot directly read a CSV file from a URL in Python, and you will have to load a CSV file by hand instead.
Grounded in accuracy
This is one of my favorite features, actually: A little over a month ago, Mistral announced a partnership with the Agence France-Presse (AFP), which is one of the most well-known and reputable international news organizations. What this means is that Le Chat has access to AFP newswire stories. What this further means is that Le Chat's responses are going to be informed by stories that follow a very high journalistic threshold. Since the AFP's newswires go out in French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Arabic, this integration with AFP only further supports Le Chat's multimodal capabilities, which I mentioned above.
Mistral Le Chat Pricing
When you compare Le Chat to ChatGPT Pro, which costs $200 per month, Le Chat you see as a highly affordable option. The Pro plan for Le Chat starts at just $14.99 per month, with discounts that can lower the price to as little as $6.99 per month. There's even a student plan going for $4.99 per month. For teams, there’s a plan at $24.99 per month, and enterprise solutions are available with custom pricing.
So what does the Mistral Le Chat's Pro plan get you that the Free plan doesn't? The free version imposes a daily cap on the number of messages you can send. Also, there are daily limits on web searches and image generations. The Pro version has extended limits, including unlimited messages each day, more advanced image generation, and there's also dedicated support for Pro users.
Some additional things about Mistral’s pricing more generally, especially for developers: Developers I think will appreciate considerations like favorable rate limits and flexible deployment options. So, if you are going to be doing something like fine-tuning open source LLMs with Mistral, you might want to spend a little time with Mistral Le Chat's pricing page. Finally, if you're interested in cloud solutions, the Mistral Cloud Overview provides further info for that, too.
Mistral Le Chat vs. ChatGPT, Claude, and Others
Mistral Le Chat is carving out a niche for itself with speed, affordability, and a commitment to privacy standards. Here, I’m giving you a head-to-head comparison so you can see for yourself how it stacks up.
| Feature | Le Chat | ChatGPT | Claude | DeepSeek |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speed | 1,000 words/second (Flash Answers) | ~200 words/second | ~150 words/second | ~300 words/second |
| Cost | $14.99/month (Pro Plan) | $20/month (Plus), $200/month (Pro) | $20/month | Custom pricing (enterprise) |
| Privacy | GDPR-compliant, on-premises options | U.S. data centers | — | — |
Future Prospects and Market Impact: Europe’s AI Revolution
Le Chat is making its mark as a distinctive European AI assistant. It does offer a viable alternative to U.S. and Chinese models by emphasizing European data privacy, multilingual support, and ethical design. And it is undeniably the best in one particular dimension, which is its unparalleled speed.
In only its first two weeks, Le Chat has gotten over a million downloads. Even French President Emmanuel Macron is apparently a fan of Le Chat, as he was reported to have been encouraging ChatGPT users to drop ChatGPT and download Le Chat instead.
I expect, after researching and trying out Le Chat, to be hearing much more about Mistral and European AI companies in general.
Conclusion
As the market gets more competitive, companies are trying to find a good product-market fit and a loyal customer base. That’s normal. And to its credit, I think Mistral’s Le Chat is finding its niche in the AI world. It does have some great advantages. First and foremost, I’m not sure anything is faster than Le Chat. It’s also less expensive than ChatGPT Pro. Finally, because the European regulators are known to be serious, and because Le Chat comes from that environment, I have a bit more trust in it, namely that Mistral actually respects privacy.
If I sold you on the idea of learning more about Mistral, check out our resources below. I’ve learned a lot with these tutorials and code-alongs. Also, enroll in our AI Fundamentals skill track, which I mentioned earlier, to learn all there is to know about generative AI.
