MistralAI-User user agent
Operated by Mistral AI
MistralAI-User is the user agent Mistral's Le Chat uses when it fetches a page to answer a user.
The MistralAI-User bot at a glance
- MistralAI-User is operated by Mistral AI and fetches a page when a person asks an AI assistant about it or shares its link.
- The robots.txt token for MistralAI-User is MistralAI-User.
- Blocking an AI assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings.
- MistralAI-User robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is MistralAI-User?
MistralAI-User visits pages on behalf of Le Chat users, for example when the assistant needs a live source.
Mistral publishes the IP addresses it uses for these fetches.
Should you block MistralAI-User?
Allow MistralAI-User unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking stops the assistant from reading your page when a user asks about it or pastes your link, so its answer falls back to other sources. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow MistralAI-User
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token MistralAI-User is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block MistralAI-User
User-agent: MistralAI-User
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow MistralAI-User
User-agent: MistralAI-User
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep MistralAI-User out of private areas only
User-agent: MistralAI-User
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to MistralAI-User
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(MistralAI\-User)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to MistralAI-User
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (MistralAI\-User) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "MistralAI-User")How to verify real MistralAI-User traffic
Mistral AI publishes the IP ranges that MistralAI-User uses. A request with the MistralAI-User user agent from an IP outside that list is an impersonator.
How to find MistralAI-User in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts MistralAI-User requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "MistralAI-User" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
MistralAI-User user agent string
The full user agent Mistral AI publishes for MistralAI-User. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; MistralAI-User/1.0; +https://docs.mistral.ai/robots)MistralAI-User FAQ
MistralAI-User identifies itself with the robots.txt token "MistralAI-User". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; MistralAI-User/1.0; +https://docs.mistral.ai/robots)
Yes. Mistral AI states that MistralAI-User follows robots.txt rules written for the "MistralAI-User" token.
Blocking an AI assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings. Blocking stops the assistant from reading your page when a user asks about it or pastes your link, so its answer falls back to other sources.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: MistralAI-User" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Yes. Mistral AI publishes the IP ranges MistralAI-User uses. Check the request IP against that list; a matching user agent from any other IP is an impersonator.
Search your server access log for "MistralAI-User", for example with: grep -i "MistralAI-User" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Mistral AI crawler documentation. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
