FR
Best LLMs for French
Models built or trained with French as a first-class language: French and European vendors, plus multilingual models where French is not an afterthought. Ranked by Elo, all hosting modes included.
| # | Model | Arena Elo | Context | Hosting | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇨🇳Qwen3.7 Max Alibaba | 1474 | 1M | API | proprietary |
| 2 | 🇨🇳GLM-5 Zhipu AI | 1458 | 128K | Self-hostable | apache-2.0 |
| 3 | 🇨🇳Qwen3.5 397B-A17B Alibaba | 1441 | 262K | Self-hostable | apache-2.0 |
| 4 | 🇨🇳Qwen 3 Max Alibaba | 1435 | 256K | EU option | apache-2.0 |
| 5 | 🇫🇷Mistral Large 3 Mistral AI | 1414 | 256K | Self-hostable | apache-2.0 |
| 6 | 🇨🇳Qwen3 235B-A22B Alibaba | 1375 | 128K | Self-hostable | apache-2.0 |
| 7 | 🇨🇳Qwen3 32B Alibaba | 1347 | 128K | Self-hostable | apache-2.0 |
| 8 | 🇺🇸Llama 4 Maverick Meta | 1327 | 1M | Self-hostable | llama-4-community |
| 9 | 🇺🇸Granite 4.1 8B IBM | 1306 | 512K | Self-hostable | apache-2.0 |
| 10 | 🇨🇳Qwen2.5 72B Alibaba | 1303 | 128K | Self-hostable | qwen |
Data verified on 4 September 2026Open in the comparator
Method
Deterministic ranking on comparator data: LMArena Elo (style control) first, HuggingFace downloads second for models without an Elo. Prices and licences are verified at the official source and dated. No model is ranked by an LLM.