Beginner
Le Chat
Le Chat (French for "The Cat") is Mistral's consumer chat product — available at chat.mistral.ai. It's Mistral's answer to ChatGPT: a polished web interface giving access to Mistral's models without any API or code knowledge.
Plans (May 2026)
| Plan | Price | Limits | Key features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | ~25 messages/day (soft cap) | Access to Mistral's models, image generation, code interpreter, 40+ connectors |
| Pro | $14.99/month | Much higher limits | Priority access, larger context, more image generation, advanced connectors, voice mode |
| Team | $24.99/user/month | Admin controls | Centralised billing, shared workspace, SSO, usage analytics, dedicated support |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | SLA, data residency in EU, private deployment, custom fine-tuned models |
What Le Chat Includes
Mistral's Models
Access to Mistral Large (general), Mistral Small (fast), and Codestral (coding) — model switching within the interface.
Image Generation
Built-in image generation powered by Flux. Create images from text prompts without leaving the chat interface.
Code Interpreter
Execute Python code, generate charts, process data — similar to ChatGPT's Advanced Data Analysis.
Web Search
Le Chat can search the web to ground answers in current information. Results are cited inline.
40+ Connectors
Connect Google Drive, Notion, GitHub, and other tools to give Le Chat context from your own documents and data.
Canvas Mode
A collaborative document editor inside Le Chat — write and edit documents with AI assistance inline.
Critical: Le Chat vs API Billing
These are completely separate products
A Le Chat Pro subscription ($14.99/month) does not give you API access. The Le Chat subscription covers only the chat.mistral.ai web interface. If you want to call Mistral models from your own code, you need a separate La Plateforme API account with its own pay-per-token billing. Many users are surprised by this — it is not the same as OpenAI where ChatGPT Plus and the API are independent but at least share the same account system.
Le Chat vs ChatGPT
| Dimension | Le Chat Pro | ChatGPT Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $14.99/month | $20/month |
| Model quality | Mistral Large (very good) | GPT-4o (slightly better on average) |
| Image generation | Flux | DALL-E 3 |
| Code interpreter | Yes | Yes (Advanced Data Analysis) |
| Web search | Yes | Yes |
| Data residency | EU option available | US-based |
| Language support | Strong in French and European languages | Strong globally |
| Open-weight models | Some (Mistral 7B, Nemo, etc.) | None |
Checklist: Do You Understand This?
- Do you know the four Le Chat plan tiers and their approximate prices?
- Can you explain why a Le Chat subscription does not give you API access?
- Do you know which features are only available on the Pro plan?
- Can you compare Le Chat Pro and ChatGPT Plus on price and key features?