Compare, line by line.
Three ways to call an AI model from a European company. What changes is who signs the contract, where the data goes, and what you can prove afterwards.
| Bretelle | OpenRouter, EU routing | Hosts direct | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company and governing law | French company, French law | US company, subject to the CLOUD Act | European companies (Scaleway, OVHcloud, Infomaniak, Mistral AI) |
| Access to the European zone | Every key, no special plan | Business plan only | Yes, at each host |
| Account and billing data | Processed in Europe | May be processed in the United States | Processed in Europe |
| Zone enforced by the server | Per key and per request, refused outside the zone | Per request, on the EU endpoint | The chosen host's zone |
| Models in the EU zone | Mistral, gpt-oss, Llama, Gemma, under one key | A few models (Mistral Large 3, Mistral Small 4, gpt-oss via Bedrock EU); no Gemma | Each host's catalogue, one key per host |
| Swiss zone | Yes, its own catalogue | No | Infomaniak, direct |
| Per-request residency log | Yes, exportable as CSV and JSON | No | No |
| Fallback when a model is down | Dynamic models, never outside the perimeter | Yes, across providers | No, build it yourself |
| Currency and fees | Euros, no top-up fee | Dollars, 5.5% on every top-up | Euros, the host's price |
| Invoice | One French VAT invoice, e-invoicing address | Invoice from a US company | One invoice per host |
| US models (GPT, Claude, Gemini) | Under a French contract, billed in euros, vendor price + 12% | Vendor price, plus the top-up fee | Not available |
What the others do better.
- OpenRouter offers several hundred models. If data location does not matter to you, its open-weight prices, served mostly in the United States, are far below any European hosting.
- A host direct is cheaper on Mistral's own models: we add our margin to its price. On gpt-oss-120b and Llama 3.3 70B, however, our prices are below Scaleway's public list.
Collected on 22 October 2026 from each provider's public pages. Offers change: check before deciding.
Sources: OpenRouter, EU in-region routing (Mistral Large 3), OpenRouter, gpt-oss-120b, OpenRouter FAQ, OpenRouter, platform fee, Scaleway Generative APIs, OVHcloud AI Endpoints, Infomaniak AI, Mistral AI.