MistralAI-User
The fetcher Mistral's assistant uses to open a page when a user's question needs it.
At a glance
- Operator
- Mistral AI
- Category
-
Answer engine
Fetches your page in real time to answer a user who is asking right now. Blocking it removes you from those answers — this is the one to leave open.
- User-Agent token
-
MistralAI-User - robots.txt token
MistralAI-User- Respects robots.txt
- Documented as compliant
- Operator docs
- docs.mistral.ai
What MistralAI-User does
Should you block MistralAI-User?
Our take
Leave it open. Answer-engine fetchers only run because a person just asked a question, and the page they read is the page that gets cited. Being the source is the entire goal — blocking here buys you nothing and costs you the mention.
How to block MistralAI-User
Add the rule below to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain
(yourdomain.com/robots.txt). Use the MistralAI-User token rather than the raw
User-Agent string, and repeat the rule on every subdomain you want covered.
New to the file? Read what robots.txt is first.
Block MistralAI-User
User-agent: MistralAI-User Disallow: /
Allow MistralAI-User explicitly
User-agent: MistralAI-User Allow: /
A note on what this does and doesn't do. robots.txt is a request, not a lock —
it works because well-behaved crawlers choose to read it. It also isn't retroactive: anything already
fetched stays fetched. If you need a hard stop, block at your firewall or CDN as well.
How MetaPilot handles MistralAI-User
MetaPilot detects MistralAI-User in your edge logs, so you see its real hits on your
real pages rather than a guess: how often it visits, which URLs it takes, and how that trend moves week to
week. From the same screen you flip MistralAI-User between allow and deny with one click —
MetaPilot rewrites only its own managed section of your
robots.txt and serves it at the edge, so the change is live on the crawler's next visit with
no deploy and no touching your own rules.
See AI-crawler analytics or follow the guide to
monitor and control AI crawlers.
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Gemini-Deep-Research
The agent behind Gemini's Deep Research mode, which reads pages as it works through a multi-step research task for one user.
ChatGPT-User
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The fetcher ChatGPT uses to open a specific page in real time while answering someone.
FAQ
What is MistralAI-User?
The fetcher Mistral's assistant uses to open a page when a user's question needs it.
MistralAI-User retrieves specific pages while Mistral's assistant is answering someone. Mistral documents that it is not used to crawl the web in any automatic fashion. Mistral runs separate tokens for search indexing and for training-data collection, so this one is purely the live-answer path.
Does MistralAI-User respect robots.txt?
Yes — Mistral AI documents that MistralAI-User honours robots.txt. A Disallow for the MistralAI-User token is respected.
How do I block MistralAI-User?
Add these two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain:
User-agent: MistralAI-UserDisallow: /
Use the MistralAI-User token, not the raw User-Agent string, and repeat the rule on every subdomain you want covered.
Will blocking MistralAI-User hurt my traffic?
Blocking it removes your pages from answers Mistral is composing for a user right now. If your actual concern is training, this is the wrong token — Mistral publishes a distinct training user agent, and blocking the user-facing one does not address it.
Ask an AI whether to block MistralAI-User