MistralAI-Index: what it is, and how to allow or block it in robots.txt

Key point. MistralAI-Index is Mistral's AI search crawler for Le Chat. It crawls pages so Le Chat can find and cite them. We found no clear statement on whether it follows robots.txt.

MistralAI-Index at a glance

These are the facts our registry holds for MistralAI-Index, checked against Mistral's documentation on October 18, 2026.

VendorMistral
Used byLe Chat
PurposeAI search
TypeUser agent
Follows robots.txtNo clear statement found; source: vendor's own crawler page, read October 18, 2026
Vendor documentationMistral crawler page, checked October 18, 2026
Published IP rangesmistral.ai/mistralai-index-ips.json

What is MistralAI-Index?

MistralAI-Index is Mistral's AI search crawler for Le Chat. It crawls pages so Le Chat can find and cite them. Our registry notes: Mistral says content crawled by MistralAI-Index is not used for training; the page does not say whether it follows robots.txt.

Mistral uses other names for other jobs: MistralAI-User (AI user fetch); MistralAI-Training (AI training). Each takes its own robots.txt group.

Does MistralAI-Index follow robots.txt?

We found no clear statement on whether MistralAI-Index follows robots.txt; our registry records it as unclear, from the vendor's own crawler page, read October 18, 2026.

A robots.txt rule records your request. It does not prove a crawler honours it, and firewall or CDN bot settings can refuse a crawler that robots.txt allows, so check those too.

How do I block MistralAI-Index in robots.txt?

Add a group that names MistralAI-Index and disallows the whole site:

User-agent: MistralAI-Index
Disallow: /

To keep it out of one folder only, disallow that path instead, for example Disallow: /private/.

How do I allow MistralAI-Index?

MistralAI-Index is allowed by default: if no group names it and no User-agent: * rule blocks it, it may read every page. A crawler obeys the most specific group that names it and falls back to User-agent: * only when no group names it (RFC 9309), so if a catch-all rule blocks crawlers, add a group for it:

User-agent: MistralAI-Index
Allow: /

Want the exact block for every AI crawler at once? Our robots.txt generator for AI crawlers writes it for each choice.

How can I tell if a request really comes from MistralAI-Index?

Match the request's IP address against Mistral's published list, because user agents can be faked: https://mistral.ai/mistralai-index-ips.json.

How often do startup websites block MistralAI-Index?

We have no figure for MistralAI-Index: it was not one of the crawlers our AI Crawler Access Report tracked. For the crawlers it did track, the headline figure is: “3 of 569 startup websites (0.5%; 95% interval 0.2% to 1.5%) block at least one AI search crawler (Elementera AI Crawler Access Report, October 2026).”

The method and the per-crawler table are in the AI Crawler Access Report.

How do I check whether my robots.txt blocks MistralAI-Index?

Read the group by hand: our free crawler checker covers 13 crawlers, and MistralAI-Index is not one of them yet.

  1. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt.
  2. Look for a User-agent: MistralAI-Index line. If there is one, only that group applies to MistralAI-Index.
  3. If there is none, the User-agent: * group applies.
  4. Within the group, the longest matching Allow or Disallow rule for a path wins.

Where can I see every AI crawler?

Our list of AI crawlers shows all 26 names in our registry, filtered by purpose. The same data is a free JSON download in our AI crawler registry.

Frequently asked questions

Three questions site owners ask about this name, each answered in one paragraph.

Should I block MistralAI-Index?

Only if you do not want Le Chat to find and cite your pages. MistralAI-Index is the crawler Le Chat uses to find pages, so blocking it takes them out of what it can fetch. Training is a separate choice, made with MistralAI-Training.

Does blocking MistralAI-Index affect other crawlers?

No. robots.txt groups are matched by name, so a group for MistralAI-Index applies only to MistralAI-Index. Mistral's other names (MistralAI-User, MistralAI-Training) need their own groups.

How do I see whether MistralAI-Index visits my site?

Search your server or CDN logs for MistralAI-Index in the user agent. User agents can be faked, so check the request's IP address against Mistral's published list: https://mistral.ai/mistralai-index-ips.json

Work with us

There are two ways to work with us. Teams that want the work done for them can use our managed AEO services: Book a call. Teams that want to see where they stand first can start with Lenz, our free analysis of how ChatGPT and Gemini answer their buyers' questions: Get your free AI visibility report.

How this page was made

A script builds this page from our AI crawler registry, the vendor crawler pages we read on October 18, 2026, and, for the blocking figures, the AI Crawler Access Report. Every sentence in quotation marks was checked against the vendor's page that day. Soroush Mehri reviewed the page, and Mojtaba Ebadi approved it for publication.

Sources