> it's MUCH cheaper and faster and does an excellent job on simple ones.

OCR should be:

1. Privacy-respecting, i.e. running on your own machine without network communications. 2. Fully open-source. 3. Gratis.

The first one is a must, the second is very important for the public interest, and the third one is a nice-to-have.

Mistral does not appear to satisfy even the first-, let alone all three.