Comparison
Frontière AI vs Melious: two European AI gateways
Melious and Frontière AI are both European gateways to open-weight models, and on price Melious wins. Melious AI GmbH, a German company in Saarbrücken, routes each request across about a dozen EU inference providers — on Llama 3.3 70B its default route costs €0.65 per million input tokens before VAT, against our €1.26 before VAT (€1.512 VAT included) — and its documentation says every inference request runs on a provider inside the EU, with no US fallback at all. The differences are elsewhere: Melious sells to businesses only and picks the provider for you, while Frontière AI is open to individuals as well, names the provider behind each model and each response, and also offers a few models through US providers, labeled fast access before you call them. Frontière AI is a French company: its 17 sovereign models run at EU providers with no non-EU capital control, the others are labeled fast access (US) before you call them, and it stores no prompts at all. If you are a company that wants only EU-hosted open models at the lowest price, Melious is the stronger offer today.
Side by side
Every row below comes from the other side's own published pages, checked on 2026-10-12 and linked at the end of this section — not from a third-party comparison.
| Criterion | Frontière AI | Melious |
|---|---|---|
| Operating company | FLEECE AI SASU | Melious AI GmbH |
| Headquarters | France | Saarbrücken, Germany |
| Governing law | French / EU law | German law (its data processing agreement) |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | Inference on the 17 sovereign models runs at EU companies; requests transit the gateway on Vercel (US company, Paris region, no prompt or response stored) | Not directly exposed: a German company whose docs say every inference request runs on a provider inside the EU, with no US or APAC fallback |
| How the catalog works | Curated catalog, 24 models live, each with a named primary provider | Router across about a dozen EU inference providers, open-weight models only, with routing modes (balanced, speed, price, eco) |
| Llama 3.3 70B, per 1M tokens (in / out) | €1.512 / €1.512 incl. VAT (€1.26 / €1.26 excl. VAT) | €0.65 / €0.65 excl. tax |
| Prompt storage | Never stored by Frontière AI — only token counts and the amount charged. Sovereign providers: OVHcloud zero retention; Scaleway none except error or abuse requests, up to two weeks; fast-access models: the serving provider's own policy | Not logged — its DPA says message contents (inputs and outputs) are not logged; its docs add that a provider may keep short-lived operational logs |
| Jurisdiction visible per model | Yes — sovereign / fast access, on the card and in the API response | Every route is EU; its router picks the provider — country filters exist inside the router but are not exposed on the public API yet (its routing docs) |
Both sides publish in euros, so nothing is converted. Melious's figure is the default (balanced) route shown on its model page; its cheaper routing modes can go lower. Melious's pricing page says all prices are plus statutory VAT, and that its offer is intended exclusively for businesses (§ 14 BGB) (checked on 2026-10-12). Frontière AI publishes VAT included — the amount actually debited — so the price verdicts on this page compare both sides excluding VAT (our price ÷ 1.2, French VAT).
Why the price gap? Melious picks among about a dozen EU providers for each request; Frontière AI serves this model through Scaleway, an EU sovereign provider, at one fixed price with a fixed margin. Both keep the inference in the EU here, so this gap is not a jurisdiction premium: it is the provider mix and our margin. Excluding VAT on both sides (Frontière AI: €1.26 in / €1.26 out per million), on this model Melious is cheaper on both input and output.
Sources, checked on 2026-10-12: melious.ai — Llama 3.3 70B (default route) · melious.ai — pricing · melious.ai — privacy · melious.ai — routing · melious.ai — sub-processors · melious.ai — DPA · melious.ai — legal notice
Where Melious is the better choice
- Lower prices on comparable open-weight models — on Llama 3.3 70B its default route is cheaper than ours, and its price-oriented routing modes go lower still.
- EU-only by construction: its docs say no US or APAC fallback exists. Frontière AI's catalog also contains fast-access models served by US companies — labeled as such, but there.
- A broader open-weight catalog (its pricing page lists 60+ models), spread over about a dozen EU inference providers with failover between them, and no minimum top-up.
- Monthly plans for coding workflows if you prefer a subscription. (Both now take Anthropic-format clients such as Claude Code: Frontière AI added /v1/messages on 2026-10-13.)
Where Frontière AI is the better choice
- Open to individuals as well as companies. Melious's pricing page says its offer is intended exclusively for businesses (§ 14 BGB).
- Every model carries its jurisdiction before you call it, in the catalog and in the API's own response — you never have to reconstruct who served a given request.
- Each response names the provider that served it (x-routed-provider), so you can log which operator handled every call — Melious's router chooses for you, and its country filters are not exposed on the public API yet.
- Prices are published VAT included: the figure you read is the amount debited from your balance.
How to choose, concretely
Both are OpenAI-compatible, so switching is a base_url and a key — and nothing stops you using both:
- A company buying only EU-hosted open models, price first: Melious.
- An individual developer, or a team that has to record which operator served each call: Frontière AI.
- Need a model only one of the two serves: check both catalogs — they overlap, but not entirely.
FAQ
Is Melious cheaper than Frontière AI?
Yes, on the models we compared. On Llama 3.3 70B, Melious's default route is €0.65 in / €0.65 out per million tokens before VAT, against €1.512 / €1.512 VAT included on Frontière AI. Excluding VAT on both sides (Frontière AI: €1.26 in / €1.26 out per million), on this model Melious is cheaper on both input and output. Its cheaper routing modes can go lower. We are not going to pretend otherwise: the argument for Frontière AI against Melious is not price.
Does Melious keep data in the EU?
By its own documentation, yes: every inference request runs on a provider inside the EU, with no US or APAC fallback, and its sub-processor list names EU-established inference providers. Its data processing agreement says message contents are not logged. One detail from that list: its optional web-search tool uses Qwant, which may pass pseudonymised queries to Microsoft as a technical search partner.
Can individuals use Melious?
Its pricing page says the offer is intended exclusively for businesses as defined by § 14 of the German Civil Code. Frontière AI serves companies and individuals alike, prepaid from €10, VAT included.
Can I choose which provider serves my request?
On Melious, its router picks among its EU providers; its routing docs say country filters exist inside the router but are not exposed on the public request yet. On Frontière AI, each model has a named primary provider, its jurisdiction label is shown before you call it, and every response names the provider that served it.
See what we actually serve
24 models live, each with its publisher, licence, hosting jurisdiction and real price.