Mistral Large 3 675B
Mistral AI · European Union · Apache 2.0
Commercial use: Yes — free for commercial use
Apache 2.0 on a 675-billion-parameter frontier model from an EU-headquartered lab. Unrestricted commercial use, and the contracting entity for the hosted API is French and directly subject to GDPR.
The strongest model from a European lab at a size you can genuinely run yourself, under Apache 2.0.
Why it should matter to you
If EU data residency is a hard requirement, this is the shortest path to a defensible answer. Apache 2.0 with no conditions, and if you use the hosted API instead, the entity you contract with is French and directly subject to GDPR — no transfer framework to justify to a DPA.
How it connects to our work
Worth separating two things that get conflated in procurement: EU jurisdiction, EU data residency, and EU-only sub-processors are three different commitments. Ask for all three in writing if all three matter. Self-hosting collapses the question entirely.
From our field notesWhere your server sits is the decision, not whose contract you sign.
Advantages
- Frontier scale under Apache 2.0 from a European lab — the cleanest compliance story available at this capability
- EU jurisdiction removes the international-transfer question rather than papering over it with a framework
- NVFP4 and Eagle variants published alongside, so serving is a solved problem
Disadvantages
- 675B dense is enormous — this is a datacentre model, not a self-host
- Mistral-Medium-3.5 in the same range ships under a custom "other" licence, so the family is mixed
- Behind the top Chinese open models on several reasoning benchmarks
Reach for it when
Regulated EU work at frontier capability where both the licence and the jurisdiction have to hold up. Nothing else combines Apache 2.0, EU incorporation and this scale.
Where it falls down
Cost-sensitive or local deployment. If you want European jurisdiction on hardware you own, Mistral Small 4 is the realistic choice.
Running it
Multi-GPU datacentre, or hosted on La Plateforme. See the hardware sizing tables for how that maps to specific chips and cards, and the quantisation guide for what you give up at each bit width.
Free tiers carrying this model
| Provider | Type | The catch | Live limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mistral La Plateforme | First-party API | Not every Mistral model is commercially free even when the weights are public — Codestral ships under a non-production licence. Check per model, not per vendor. | check → |
| OpenRouter | Aggregator | Free-pool membership changes without notice — a model you built on can stop being free, and the list above will drift. Data passes through OpenRouter and then the upstream provider, so check the privacy and routing settings before sending anything sensitive. | check → |
| NVIDIA NIM | Inference host | It is a credit grant, not a permanent free tier. When the credits run out you are on a paid plan or self-hosting the container. | check → |
Jurisdiction: European Union
Mistral is the only EU-headquartered lab shipping frontier-adjacent open weights. Contracting with an EU entity removes the international-transfer question entirely rather than solving it with a framework. Most of the Mistral open range is Apache 2.0, so you can also self-host and remove the vendor from the data path altogether.
Watch for: EU jurisdiction is not the same as EU data residency, and neither is the same as EU-only sub-processors. Ask for all three in writing if it matters to you. Also note that Codestral ships under a non-production licence — being a European vendor does not make every model commercially free.
Frequently asked
Can I use Mistral Large 3 675B commercially?
Apache 2.0 on a 675-billion-parameter frontier model from an EU-headquartered lab. Unrestricted commercial use, and the contracting entity for the hosted API is French and directly subject to GDPR.
What hardware do I need to run Mistral Large 3 675B?
Multi-GPU datacentre, or hosted on La Plateforme. Weights alone are roughly 380 GB at Q4_K_M and 715 GB at Q8_0. Add KV cache on top of that, which grows with your context length.
What licence is Mistral Large 3 675B released under?
Apache 2.0. Full commercial use, modification and redistribution. Patent grant included. The most permissive licence in common use for open-weight models.
Where can I use Mistral Large 3 675B for free?
Free tiers carrying it include Mistral La Plateforme, OpenRouter, NVIDIA NIM. Limits differ per provider and change often, so check each provider's own limits page. You can also self-host the weights, which has no rate limit at all.
Similar models
DeepSeek-V4-Flash
Hosted, or 256 GB+ unified memory at Q4. Not a laptop model.
GLM-5.3-Flash
80-96 GB at Q4_K_M. A workstation or Ultra-class Mac.
Qwen3.8 27B
24 GB GPU at Q4_K_M, or a 32 GB Mac at Q6_K.
gpt-oss-120b
80 GB GPU, or 96 GB+ unified memory.
Wiring Mistral Large 3 675B into something real?
We build the evaluation harness, the failover and the cost ceilings around a model like this, so it survives contact with production.
Maps to AI agent development, AI automation development and AI strategy and consulting. Or see it working: our case studies.