Is Le Chat private? What Mistral's Vibe keeps, trains on, and remembers

The Morse teamPublished October 25, 20269 min read

As of October 2026, Mistral's Le Chat, renamed Vibe on August 12, 2026, is private from other people unless you share a chat link, but it isn't private from Mistral. On the Free and Pro plans, Mistral trains on your chats by default until you opt out, keeps them on its servers until you delete them or your account, and says zero data retention "is not available for Vibe Work or Chat, regardless of your subscription plan."

We read Mistral's privacy policy (effective September 3, 2026), its consumer terms for users outside the EEA (effective October 12, 2026), its help center's data governance articles, its Vibe documentation, and its pricing page on October 20, 2026. Le Chat has a reputation as the privacy-friendly chatbot, and some of it is earned. Mistral hosts your data in the EU by default, publishes a retention period for each kind of account data, and keeps its new Knowledge Base from saving health details unless you turn that on.

Le Chat privacy at a glance

Does Mistral train on your data?

Yes, by default, on every consumer plan. Mistral's help page, updated October 20, 2026, says that on Vibe "input and output data are used by default to train our artificial intelligence models, unless you opt out" (Mistral). Enterprise customers start opted out. Paying for Pro doesn't change the default; Mistral's Memories documentation lists "Free, Pro, and Student plans" together as plans whose prompts "may be used to train our models" (Mistral docs).

Files count. Mistral says "documents attached or uploaded within Vibe are considered as input data," so a contract or a medical letter you upload is training data until you switch it off (Mistral). We list the exact switch names for the web and the mobile app in which AI companies train on your data.

Three things the switch doesn't reach, from Mistral's own pages:

• Feedback. A thumbs up or down "and adding a comment" authorizes training "whichever subscription plan you adhere to." Mistral says it separates feedback from your account "using de-identify methods" (Mistral).
• The API. The Vibe and API training toggles "are separate. Opting out of one does not opt you out of the other" (Mistral).
• What's already in a model. The privacy policy warns that when a request "concerns the training of our models," your rights "have technical limitations" (Privacy policy).

How long does Le Chat keep your chats?

Until you delete them. The privacy policy says: "we keep your Input and Output until you delete your account or until you delete the conversation from Vibe" (Privacy policy). There's no auto-delete setting on the pages we read.

Mistral's API is stricter than its own chat app. API inputs and outputs are kept for "thirty (30) rolling days to monitor abuse" (Privacy policy), and pay-as-you-go API customers can apply for zero data retention. Vibe users can't, because, in Mistral's words, "we must store your data for user experience purposes (such as accessing your conversation history, showing your previous work, or maintaining application state)" (Mistral).

Deleting a chat isn't instant on Mistral's side. That zero retention page says deleted conversations are removed "typically after a short grace period to prevent accidental data loss, and for monitoring and legal retention purposes" (Mistral). Mistral's page on deleting a chat adds that it "may retain your input and output data to enforce our Usage Policy, address Terms of Service or policy violations, or as required by law" (Mistral). Neither gives a number of days. Before you delete anything, you can take a copy: the privacy policy says a user control lets you "export your data at all times from your Mistral AI account," and lists it under both your right of access and your right to portability (Privacy policy).

Some account details outlast the account. After you delete it, Mistral keeps your name for 5 years, the email or phone number used to verify your account for 1 year, connection logs for 1 rolling year, and invoices for 10 years (Privacy policy).

Does Le Chat remember what you tell it?

Yes, and since the Knowledge Base replaced Memories, it does so by default. Mistral's documentation says "Knowledge Base is enabled by default" and that besides what you ask it to save, "Vibe also detects recurring details that would be useful later" and "stores them on its own" (Mistral docs). Your old Memories move into it.

Mistral deserves credit for the sensitive-data rules. Knowledge Base doesn't save political opinions, religious beliefs, or health details unless you turn on Sensitive data in Knowledge, and it never saves government ID numbers, criminal records, bank details, passwords, or "sensitive information about other people."

Two things to know before you trust the off switch:

• Off doesn't delete. "Turning off Knowledge Base doesn't delete your stored knowledge entries." Use Delete all knowledge first.
• Remembered facts can be trained on. Mistral says memories "are treated like any other prompt" for training unless you've opted out (Mistral).

To turn it off, click your organization name at the bottom left of the sidebar, then Privacy, and under Personalization switch off Knowledge.

Does Le Chat have an incognito mode?

It has Temporary Chat. Mistral's Vibe documentation says a Temporary Chat "isn't saved to your history or used to train our models," and adds: "We only log that a Temporary Chat happened, not its content, and data may be retained where legally required" (Mistral docs). The pages we read on October 20, 2026 don't say how long that legally required copy can last.

Where Mistral's own pages disagree

Mistral changed Le Chat twice in 2026: the rename to Vibe on August 12 (Mistral), then Chat and Work merged into one screen on September 22 (Mistral docs). Its pages haven't all caught up. Read on October 20, 2026:

Le Chat's privacy reputation leans on a June 2025 ranking by Incogni that called Mistral's the "least privacy-invasive" AI platform (Incogni). That ranking predates the Knowledge Base, which now saves by default, and it doesn't weigh the chat app having no zero retention option on any plan. If you're on a Team plan, check the toggle yourself instead of trusting either page.

Is Le Chat safe, and does EU hosting protect you?

Partly. EU hosting governs where your data sits, and Mistral's other rules govern who uses it. Mistral says "by default, your data is hosted in the European Union," but "depending on the feature you use, your data can be temporarily transferred outside of the European Union" to the subprocessors in its Trust Center, under the EU's Standard Contractual Clauses (Mistral). It encrypts data at rest with AES256 and in transit with TLS 1.2 or later (Mistral). Neither is end-to-end encryption: Mistral's systems read your chats to answer them and store them for your history.

Who else can see a chat, by Mistral's own account:

• Anyone with a share link, including people your recipient forwards it to. Links leave out your username unless it's in the chat (Mistral).
• Mistral's automated moderation. The consumer terms reserve "the right to monitor your use of Mistral AI Products through automated means" (Mistral terms).
• Mistral's own staff. The privacy policy lists "authorized members of our teams who need to access your personal data, strictly to perform their jobs" (Privacy policy).
• Courts and regulators. The privacy policy lists "competent courts," lawyers, bailiffs, and authorities "such as the French data protection authority (CNIL)" among those it may share data with (Privacy policy).

The same consumer terms set the minimum age at thirteen, with a parent's or guardian's permission where required (Mistral terms).

Mistral says it "does not sell or share your personal data for marketing or advertising purposes," though if you accept marketing cookies, partners' cookies may show you Mistral ads elsewhere (Mistral).

On safety beyond privacy, Italy's competition authority opened a case on June 3, 2025 over whether Le Chat warned users enough that its answers can be inaccurate or invented. On February 17, 2026, it made Mistral's commitments on those warnings binding and closed the case "senza accertare l'infrazione," without finding an infringement (AGCM).

Is Le Chat Pro more private than Free?

No. Pro costs $14.99 a month ($5.99 for verified students) and buys more messages, searches, and coding time (Mistral pricing). The training default, retention, and Knowledge Base rules on the pages we read are the same for Free and Pro. Team, at $24.99 per user a month, adds admin controls, and Enterprise starts opted out of training and can run Vibe "on-premises, in a private cloud, or on Mistral Cloud" (Mistral).

How Morse keeps your chat history off its servers

Every gap above comes from one fact Mistral states plainly: Vibe must store your chats on its servers to show you your history, so it can't offer zero retention, and anything it stores can be trained on, remembered, or handed over. Morse keeps your history somewhere else.

• Private, for the zero retention Vibe can't give you. It's the default for a new chat. Open-weight models like DeepSeek, Kimi, and GLM run on hosts that agreed to keep nothing, because Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers. Where a host confirms zero retention on each reply, Morse checks it and refuses a reply that doesn't.
• E2EE, for the upload you'd never want in a training set. Your browser checks the secure enclave's hardware proof, then encrypts the message so only that enclave can read it. Our servers relay ciphertext they can't read. It rests on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed. E2EE chats come with Pro, at $19 a month.
• Anonymous, for GPT, Claude, or Gemini without your name on the request. Our proxy removes your account, email, and IP address and sends the message under Morse's own account. The provider sees the message without knowing it's you, and may keep it for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy.

In every mode, your chat history is stored in your browser, encrypted, not on our servers. There's no training toggle to find, because Morse doesn't train AI on your content, sell your data, or show ads (Morse privacy policy). There's no knowledge base filling itself in on our side, because our servers don't keep messages or log what you write. Since we don't store chats, we usually have very little to give authorities. Clearing your browser, losing the device, or deleting your account deletes your chats, and Morse can't recover them, so keep a copy of anything you need. For how this compares across apps, see are AI chats private and what zero data retention means.

So is Le Chat private enough for you?

• Model training: switch off training on the web and in the mobile app (which AI companies train on your data has both switch names), and skip the comment box on ratings. Morse doesn't train AI on your chats.
• Memory: delete all knowledge, then turn Knowledge off. On Morse, your chat history stays in your browser, and our servers don't keep messages.
• Retention: use Temporary Chat for anything sensitive, and delete chats you don't need. On Morse, Private mode's hosts have agreed to keep nothing, and your history never sits on our servers.
• Uploads: opt out before you attach a document. On Morse, attached files are sent with the message and never stored by us.

You can ask a first question from the Morse home page without an account, or start free and open an end-to-end encrypted chat today.