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OpenAI API alternatives outside the United States (2026)

Non-US alternatives to the OpenAI API in October 2026 include Augure (Canada), Mistral and OVHcloud (France), Cohere (Canada, US-hosted), Aleph Alpha and IONOS (Germany), Nebius (Netherlands) and self-hosted open-weight models; most accept the OpenAI chat completions format, so the switch is a base URL, a key and a model id.

Updated 2026-10-28 · Markdown version · Version française

If you build on the OpenAI API and need a provider headquartered outside the United States, you have real choices in October 2026. This page lists seven providers plus the self-hosted path, with the facts each one publishes about where inference runs, where data is stored, whether the API accepts the OpenAI format, and what currency the bill comes in. It is for developers and the privacy officers who approve their vendors. Every competitor fact comes from the vendor's own pages or a reputable report, listed under Sources. "Non-US" here means headquartered and incorporated outside the United States. That alone does not settle jurisdiction: US investors, a US subsidiary, or hosting on a US hyperscaler can each matter, and you should check the vendor's own pages before you decide.

At a glance

Provider Headquarters Where inference runs Where data is stored OpenAI-compatible API Billing Suits
Augure Canada (no US parent or investors) Canadian infrastructure (Ontario) and vetted EU partners under zero data retention; never US providers Canada Yes, https://api.augureai.ca/v1 CAD Canadian teams that want Canadian storage, Canada-only tiers and Quebec French.
Cohere Canada (Toronto); investors include Nvidia, AMD, Oracle, Salesforce and Cisco Hosted platform on Google Cloud US-Central per its Trust Center; VPC and on-prem on your compute Google Cloud, US-Central, for the SaaS platform Yes, https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1 Dollars for legacy models; Command A+ price not published Enterprises with platform teams; embeddings and rerank.
Mistral France (Paris) Mistral Compute in Europe (June 2025 announcement); Large 4 "available across multiple regions worldwide" Not named in the commercial terms or DPA we checked mistralai SDK; self-hosted vLLM exposes an OpenAI-compatible API USD with a EUR toggle EU buyers; teams that want Apache 2.0 weights.
OVHcloud AI Endpoints France (founded 1999) "Hosted and run in the European Union"; Gravelines, France per the capabilities guide No user data stored for AI Endpoints; only what billing needs Yes, https://oai.endpoints.kepler.ai.cloud.ovh.net/v1 EUR Cheapest open-weight tokens from an EU provider.
Aleph Alpha (PhariaAI) Germany (Heidelberg); merger with Cohere signed September 2026, pending regulators On the infrastructure where you install PhariaAI Where you deploy it Responses API follows the OpenAI Responses specification, at your deployment URL Not published as of October 2026 German and EU public bodies and regulated enterprises that want a self-run suite.
IONOS AI Model Hub Germany (Montabaur) "Data processing is confined within Germany" Prompts and outputs "not retained after the request completes" Yes, https://openai.inference.de-txl.ionos.com/v1 "$" shown, currency not named on the page Open-weight models with processing in Germany.
Nebius Token Factory Netherlands (Amsterdam); Nasdaq-listed Public endpoints: "Global", decided dynamically; dedicated endpoints in a region you pick (EU, UK, Israel, US regions listed) Retained inputs and outputs stored in Finland (EU) unless zero data retention is on Yes, https://api.tokenfactory.nebius.com/v1/ Not verified as of October 2026 Open models at scale with dedicated endpoints and EU storage.
Self-hosted open weights (Ollama, vLLM) Not applicable; MIT-licensed software Your own hardware Your own hardware Yes, Ollama at http://localhost:11434/v1; vLLM exposes an OpenAI-compatible server Hardware and staff Teams with GPUs and operations capacity, or air-gapped environments.

Entries are ordered by country, then name, with Augure first because this is its page.

Cohere

Cohere was founded in Toronto in 2019 and keeps offices in Toronto, New York, London, San Francisco, Montreal, Paris, Seoul and Berlin. Its investors include Nvidia, AMD, Oracle, Salesforce and Cisco alongside Canadian funds. Its Trust Center states the SaaS platform is hosted on Google Cloud in US-Central and that Cohere does not use servers outside the US; private VPC and on-prem deployments run on your compute. The native v2 Chat API uses the cohere SDK, and a Compatibility API at https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1 accepts the OpenAI format. Embed v5 and Rerank v5 are a real advantage over Augure, which publishes no embedding endpoint. Cohere signed a definitive agreement to merge with Aleph Alpha on September 16, 2026, with dual headquarters in Toronto and Berlin once regulators clear it. Migration guide: Augure vs Cohere.

Mistral

Mistral AI, founded in Paris in April 2023, sells open-weight and commercial models through La Plateforme. Its commercial terms (September 25, 2026) and DPA (July 27, 2026) do not name a hosting country; the Mistral Large 4 announcement says the model is available across multiple regions worldwide, and Mistral describes Mistral Compute as an AI infrastructure project in Europe. Training on Customer Data is off by default with exceptions for opt-in-by-default products, feedback, and Labs or Preview models. Prices are in USD with a EUR toggle: Mistral Large 4 at US$1.36 input and US$4.18 output per 1M tokens. The thing Mistral does that Augure does not: Apache 2.0 weights for Mistral Small 4, Large 3 and Ministral 3, which you can run anywhere. Migration guide: Augure vs Mistral.

OVHcloud AI Endpoints

OVHcloud is a French cloud provider founded in 1999. Its Canadian product page says AI Endpoints is "hosted and run in the European Union", the capabilities guide places the infrastructure in Gravelines, France, and the regions page lists AI Endpoints under Europe only. OVHcloud says it does not store user data for the service and never uses it to train models. The API is OpenAI-compatible at https://oai.endpoints.kepler.ai.cloud.ovh.net/v1, and the catalogue prices in EUR: gpt-oss-120b at EUR 0.08 input and EUR 0.40 output per 1M tokens. ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II and HDS are stated on the product page. It beats Augure on token price and on named open models. Migration guide: Augure vs OVHcloud AI Endpoints.

Aleph Alpha (PhariaAI)

Aleph Alpha GmbH is registered in Heidelberg, Germany. Its product is PhariaAI, described in its docs as "a sovereign AI suite" installed from a Helm chart; the Responses API docs use https://your-deployment-url/v1 as the base URL and say the API "follows the OpenAI Responses API specification", usable with the OpenAI Python SDK. Inference and storage therefore sit wherever you install it. We found no published hosted base URL, chat completions endpoint or price list as of October 2026. Ownership is changing: Cohere and Aleph Alpha signed a merger agreement on September 16, 2026, with Schwarz Group as lead investor and Heidelberg to become a research centre. Aleph Alpha suits a German public body or regulated enterprise that wants to run the whole stack itself, which Augure does not offer.

IONOS AI Model Hub

IONOS Group SE is registered in Montabaur, Germany. Its AI Model Hub docs say "data processing is confined within Germany", that prompts and outputs are "processed there and nowhere else", that content "is never logged" and "is not retained after the request completes", and that it "is not used to train, fine-tune or otherwise improve any model". The REST API is described as "fully OpenAI-compatible", with the base URL https://openai.inference.de-txl.ionos.com/v1 in its how-to. The catalogue lists Qwen3.5 and Qwen3.8 models, gpt-oss-120b, Llama 3.3 70B and Mistral Small 24B, plus embeddings, OCR and image generation. Prices show a bare "$" (Qwen3.5-9B at $0.16 input and $0.23 output per 1M on the Canadian page); the currency is not named. It beats Augure on price and on in-country processing for a German buyer.

Nebius Token Factory

Nebius Group N.V. is headquartered in Amsterdam and listed on Nasdaq (NBIS). Token Factory is its OpenAI-compatible inference platform at https://api.tokenfactory.nebius.com/v1/. Its legal guide says public endpoints run in a "Global" region decided dynamically and subject to change, while dedicated endpoints run in the region you select. Nebius lists regions in Finland, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States (Kansas City and Woodbury). Unless you enable zero data retention, inputs and outputs are kept to speed up inference and stored in Finland. It states "We do not use your content to train, fine-tune or improve any AI models". Pricing currency could not be verified from the pages we reached. Nebius beats Augure on dedicated GPU endpoints and model breadth; the US regions and dynamic routing are the points to check.

Self-hosted open weights (Ollama, vLLM)

Running the model yourself is the one option with no vendor in the request path. Ollama is MIT-licensed, binds to 127.0.0.1 by default, exposes an OpenAI-compatible endpoint at http://localhost:11434/v1, and its FAQ says "We don't see your prompts or data when you run locally". Mistral's deployment docs recommend vLLM, which exposes an OpenAI-compatible API, for self-hosting its Apache 2.0 weights. The costs are hardware, power and people: a third-party guide puts a 70B model at roughly 47 to 52 GB of VRAM at 4-bit. Ollama's default context is 4,096 tokens. Note that Ollama Inc.'s privacy policy says account data may be processed in the United States, and its optional cloud models are hosted "primarily in the United States". Guide: Augure vs Ollama.

Augure

Augure is a Canadian company with no US corporate parent and no US investors. Customer data is stored in Canada. Inference runs on Canadian infrastructure and with vetted EU partners under zero-data-retention agreements, and is never routed to providers in the United States; some model tiers run in Canada, others in the EU, and every response names its inference_region. Accounts can be set Canada-only: requests then stay in Canada or fail with 503 residency_unavailable. tofino-3 and the Augure Open models are served only in Canada. Customer data is never used to train models. Limited US processing exists for payment card networks and email delivery only, documented in the privacy policy. Prices are in CAD: ossington-5 C$1.50 input and C$3.00 output per 1M tokens, rosedale-1 C$2.50 and C$6.00, tofino-3 C$0.60 and C$2.00. What Augure lacks: embeddings, audio and image generation endpoints, open weights for its own models. Guides: OpenAI-compatible API hosted in Canada, Augure vs ChatGPT.

What changes in code

For Augure, the OpenAI SDK needs two changes: the base URL and the key, then a model id.

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.augureai.ca/v1",   # was https://api.openai.com/v1
    api_key=os.environ["AUGURE_API_KEY"],    # aug_sk_live_...
)
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="ossington-5",                     # was gpt-4o, gpt-5, ...
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Summarise this clause in one sentence."}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)
print(resp.model_extra["_augure"]["inference_region"])   # e.g. ca-on-toronto

The same two-line change works, per their own docs, for Cohere's Compatibility API, OVHcloud AI Endpoints, IONOS AI Model Hub, Nebius Token Factory and Ollama; each publishes a base URL in the table above. Aleph Alpha's Responses API takes the OpenAI SDK's client.responses.create() against your deployment URL. Mistral's La Plateforme uses the mistralai SDK, whose chat.complete call resembles the OpenAI shape; its weights on vLLM speak OpenAI directly. On Augure, re-check max_tokens (cap 32,768; tofino-3 16,384; omit it on reasoning models), reasoning_effort, and response_format, which is prompt-enforced on reasoning models.

How to choose

  • Where does the request run? Ask for the country and the operator, not the region name. Public endpoints that route "globally" are a different answer from a fixed region.
  • Where is data stored, and for how long? Zero data retention may be a setting (Nebius), an approval (OpenAI) or the default (Augure, OVHcloud, IONOS).
  • Are inputs used to train models? Check the default and the exceptions, including feedback and preview models.
  • Whose jurisdiction? Headquarters, investors, subsidiaries and the hosting provider each count. A Canadian company on a US cloud is still on a US cloud.
  • Which certifications are published, and can you get the report? SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 are common; Augure's are in progress.
  • What currency is the bill in, and does the price convert at metering time?
  • Does the vendor commit to French, and to Quebec French specifically, if your users write in it?

Sources

Frequently asked questions

What are the alternatives to the OpenAI API that are not US companies?
As of October 2026, the options with published developer APIs include Augure (Canada), Mistral and OVHcloud AI Endpoints (France), Cohere (Canada, hosted in the US), Aleph Alpha and IONOS AI Model Hub (Germany), and Nebius Token Factory (Netherlands). Self-hosting open-weight models with Ollama or vLLM removes the vendor from the request path entirely. Each one publishes different facts about where inference runs and where data is stored.
Which non-US AI APIs are OpenAI-compatible?
Per their own documentation: Augure (https://api.augureai.ca/v1), Cohere's Compatibility API (https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1), OVHcloud AI Endpoints, IONOS AI Model Hub (https://openai.inference.de-txl.ionos.com/v1), Nebius Token Factory (https://api.tokenfactory.nebius.com/v1/) and Ollama (http://localhost:11434/v1). Aleph Alpha documents a Responses API that follows the OpenAI Responses specification at your own deployment URL. Mistral uses its own mistralai SDK; self-hosted Mistral weights on vLLM expose an OpenAI-compatible API.
Does a non-US headquarters mean my data is outside US jurisdiction?
No. Headquarters is one fact among several. Cohere is Canadian and its Trust Center says its hosted platform runs on Google Cloud in the US. Nebius is Dutch and lists US regions among its data centres. US investors, a US subsidiary or a US hyperscaler in the path can each matter. Read the vendor's own trust and region pages and ask for the answer in writing.
Is there an OpenAI-compatible API hosted in Canada?
Augure's API at https://api.augureai.ca/v1 accepts the OpenAI chat completions format. Customer data is stored in Canada, inference runs on Canadian infrastructure and with vetted EU partners under zero-data-retention agreements, and it is never routed to providers in the United States. Prices are in CAD.

Vendor details are as published by each vendor on the date above and change often; confirm current terms with the vendor. Augure details are as stated in our privacy policy, including limited US processing for payment card networks and email delivery. Nothing here is legal advice. privacy policy

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