Best European sovereign LLM
Last updated 2026-05-26 · Page updated 2026-07-13
Top 8 open-source picks for European data sovereignty, ranked by benchmark performance and real-world fit. Updated monthly.
Mistral Small 3
Mistral AI's 24B dense model that closes most of the gap with 70B-class models. Best quality-per-parameter we've measured at this size in 2025.
Mistral Small 3.1 24B
Mistral AI's Small 3.1 — Small 3 plus a vision encoder, a 128k context, and ~150 tok/s inference under Apache 2.0. Small 3.2 (June 2025) is a drop-in upgrade.
Devstral Small 2 24B
Mistral AI's 24B coding specialist co-developed with All Hands AI, scoring 72.2% on SWE-Bench under Apache 2.0. Fits on a single RTX 4090.
Mistral Small 3.2 24B
Mistral AI's June 2025 refresh of Small 3.1: a 24B Apache 2.0 dense model with vision input, sharper function calling, and roughly half the rate of runaway generations seen in 3.1.
Magistral Small 24B
Mistral AI's first open reasoning model, built on Small 3.1 with RL-trained chain-of-thought. Hits 70.7% on AIME24 under Apache 2.0.
Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct
Mistral AI and NVIDIA's co-developed 12B instruct model with 128k context, the Tekken tokenizer, and strong European multilingual coverage.
Lucie 7B
A French-sovereign 7B model from OpenLLM-France, backed by CNRS and LINAGORA, with a fully transparent and auditable training corpus.
Codestral 22B v0.1
Mistral AI's 22B code specialist covering 80+ programming languages, with strong HumanEval and MBPP scores. Locked behind the restrictive MNPL license — personal and research use only.
Which GPU should you buy to run Mistral Small 3?
To run Mistral Small 3 locally at Q4, you need ~14 GB of VRAM. The best value for this is a RTX 5070 Ti (16 GB VRAM).
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Frequently asked questions
What is the best local LLM for European data sovereignty?
Mistral Small 3 tops this ranking — a 24B model, licensed under Apache 2.0, needing about 14 GB of VRAM at Q4 quantization. See the full list below for the runner-ups and how they compare.
How much VRAM do I need to run Mistral Small 3?
At Q4 quantization, Mistral Small 3 needs about 14 GB of VRAM and fits comfortably on a single 24 GB GPU.
Which of these models fit an 8 GB GPU?
At Q4 quantization, Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct, Lucie 7B fit within 8 GB of VRAM.
Are the models on this European data sovereignty list free for commercial use?
Licenses across this list include Apache 2.0, Mistral Non-Production License. Check the specific license of each model on its catalog page before deploying commercially, as terms vary by author.
What context window do these models support?
Context windows on this list range from 4k to 250k tokens, depending on the model.