MistralAI-User: what it does, and what blocking it means
The fetcher Le Chat uses when somebody asks it to look at a specific page. Mistral says it does no automatic crawling at all.
| Operator | Mistral |
|---|---|
| What it does | Fetches when a user asks |
| Obeys robots.txt | Yes, per its operator's docs |
| Governs | Other AI assistants |
| Has a crawler | Yes |
| Last verified | 15 September 2026 |
| Next review | 15 December 2026. We re-check every entry against the operator’s documentation each quarter. |
What happens if you block MistralAI-User?
Blocking it affects
- Le Chat opening your page when someone asks about it
It does not affect
- Le Chat's search results
- Mistral model training
Does MistralAI-User crawl your site?
This runs when a person puts your URL in front of Le Chat, not on a schedule, and not to build an index. Mistral's documentation describes it as not used for crawling the web in any automatic fashion, which is the same shape as ChatGPT-User, Claude-User and Perplexity-User.
Blocking it stops Le Chat opening your page for someone who has already found you and asked about you specifically. That is a much narrower thing to lose than search visibility, and it is a different token, MistralAI-Index, that decides the search half.
Mistral publishes address ranges for this one too, so it can be confirmed in your logs.
How do you spot MistralAI-User in your logs?
To find MistralAI-User in your logs, match the User-Agent shown on this page. The robots.txt token is what the crawler reads, not what appears in the request.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; MistralAI-User/1.0; +https://docs.mistral.ai/robots)Anyone can send that User-Agent, so treat it as a claim. Mistral's published IP ranges are the stronger way to verify the request.
How do you block or allow MistralAI-User in robots.txt?
To block MistralAI-User:
User-agent: MistralAI-User
Disallow: /To allow it explicitly, use an Allow: / rule if your file has a blanket User-agent: * disallow:
User-agent: MistralAI-User
Allow: /With neither rule, MistralAI-User is allowed by default.
Not sure how MistralAI-User fits with the others? Build the whole file, or see which AI crawlers to allow.
Is your site blocking MistralAI-User?
A CDN or bot-management rule can still block MistralAI-User even when robots.txt says it is welcome. You cannot see that mismatch from the front of the site.
We request your robots.txt and homepage. We read your sitemap only when robots.txt hides pages from a crawler and we need to measure how much is affected. No other page.
Official sources
- Mistral’s crawler documentation
- Published IP ranges is the only way to verify a request claiming this user agent really came from Mistral
How is MistralAI-User different from Mistral’s other crawlers?
| MistralAI-User | MistralAI-Training | MistralAI-Index | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Its job | Fetches when a user asks | Model training | Search & citations |
| Blocking it affects | Le Chat opening your page when someone asks about it | Mistral model training | Le Chat's search results and citations |
| Blocking it leaves alone | Le Chat's search results; Mistral model training | Le Chat's search and the pages it opens for users | Mistral model training |
| Obeys robots.txt | Yes, per its operator's docs | Yes, per its operator's docs | Yes, per its operator's docs |
| Verifiable by IP | Yes, ranges are published | No, no published ranges | Yes, ranges are published |
| Last verified | 15 September 2026 | 15 September 2026 | 15 September 2026 |