MistralAI-User User Agent: What It Is & How to Block It

01 · Operator

Who operates MistralAI-User

Company: Mistral AI
Type: AI assistant fetcher
Official docs: docs.mistral.ai

02 · Behavior

What MistralAI-User does

When a user asks Mistral's assistant a question, MistralAI-User may visit a web page to help answer it. The response includes a link to the source. Mistral states it is not used for automatic crawling or for AI training.

03 · Impact

Why MistralAI-User matters for your site

If you allow it

Your pages can be cited and linked in Mistral answers
Not used for AI training
IP addresses are published

If you block it

Users may get answers without visiting your site
Robots.txt handling is not explicitly documented

04 · Allow

How to allow MistralAI-User

robots.txt

User-agent: MistralAI-User
Allow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "MistralAI-User")
Action:     Skip › All Super Bot Fight Mode rules

# Also check Security › Bots: "Block AI bots" can block it regardless of robots.txt.

WordPress

# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: MistralAI-User
Allow: /

nginx

# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "MistralAI\-User") { return 403; }

Apache

# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} MistralAI\-User [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

05 · Block

How to block MistralAI-User

Start with robots.txt. If MistralAI-User keeps showing up in your logs, block it at your CDN or web server.

robots.txt

User-agent: MistralAI-User
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "MistralAI-User")
Action:     Block

WordPress

# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: MistralAI-User
Disallow: /

nginx

# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "MistralAI\-User") {
    return 403;
}

Apache

# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} MistralAI\-User [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>

06 · User agents

User agents we see for MistralAI-User

The user agent published by the operator:

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; MistralAI-User/1.0; +https://docs.mistral.ai/robots)

07 · Verification

Is it really MistralAI-User?

Anyone can copy a user agent. Real MistralAI-User requests come from the IP ranges published at mistral.ai/mistralai-user-ips.json.

FAQ

Questions about MistralAI-User

What is MistralAI-User?

It is Mistral AI's user-initiated fetcher. It visits pages to answer user questions and cites the source.

Is MistralAI-User used for AI training?

No. Mistral states it is not used for automatic crawling or for generative AI training.

How do I verify MistralAI-User?

Compare the request IP with the list Mistral publishes at mistral.ai/mistralai-user-ips.json.

MistralAI-User is Mistral AI’s AI assistant fetcher