How to Use Mistral Vibe (Formerly Le Chat): Free Plan, Pro and API

Last updated: 22 October 2026

Mistral AI, the Paris-based AI company, launched Le Chat in February 2024 as Europe’s answer to ChatGPT. In 2026 it became Vibe, a work agent that can read your inbox, build reports from spreadsheets, schedule recurring tasks and run coding agents that open pull requests. Your old Le Chat conversations and settings carried over.

This guide explains how to use Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat) step by step, what the free and paid plans include, how Work Mode and Code Mode work, how to use the Mistral API and what it costs, and who should pick Mistral over ChatGPT or Claude.

What is Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat)?

Mistral Vibe is the AI assistant from Mistral AI that combines chat, research, document and slide creation, a Work Mode agent and coding agents in one app. Until May 2026 it was called Le Chat.

Many people still search for “Le Chat”, and Mistral’s pages use both names during the transition. For alternatives, see our list of the best ChatGPT alternatives.

How do you use Mistral Vibe for free?

You use Mistral Vibe for free by visiting chat.mistral.ai or installing the Vibe app, signing in and typing your question. The free plan includes chat, web search, basic image generation and editing, limited Libraries, more than 100 connectors and up to five scheduled tasks.

1. Open Vibe. Go to chat.mistral.ai or download Mistral’s app from the App Store or Google Play.
2. Sign in with an email or a supported account. Existing Le Chat users keep their history.
3. Ask a question. Type naturally; turn on web search for current topics.
4. Try Flash Answers. Mistral is known for very fast responses; Pro includes 150 Flash Answers a day.
5. Upload files. Add PDFs or spreadsheets to a Library so Vibe can answer from your documents.
6. Use Deep Research for longer, cited reports on a topic.
7. Create images with the built-in image generation and editing tools.

How do Work Mode and Code Mode work?

Work Mode is Mistral Vibe’s agent for office tasks: it connects to your work apps, proposes a plan, waits for your approval and then gathers information and produces outputs. Code Mode runs coding agents in isolated cloud sandboxes that build features, fix bugs, write tests and open pull requests.

Work Mode

• Connections: Google Workspace, Outlook, SharePoint, Slack and GitHub.
• Typical jobs: scan an inbox for client requests, pull figures from spreadsheets into a report, and push results to Notion or SharePoint.
• Control: it shows a plan first and you can expand each step to check what it did.
• Scheduling and Skills: repeat tasks daily, weekly or monthly, and save workflows as reusable Skills.

Code Mode

• Cloud agents: parallel coding sessions that keep running after you close your laptop.
• Developer tools: a VS Code extension and a command-line tool with a /teleport command that moves sessions between your terminal and the cloud.
• Where: code.mistral.ai.

Compare these agents with rivals in our best AI coding assistants and deep research guide.

How much does Mistral Vibe cost?

Mistral Vibe costs $0 on the Free plan, $14.99 a month on Pro, $24.99 per user a month on Team and a custom price on Enterprise, with taxes added. Verified students can get Pro for $5.99 a month.

Pro is cheaper than ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro at $20, and the included $15 of API credits is unusual. See more deals in our AI student discounts guide and compare assistants in ChatGPT vs Claude.

How do you use the Mistral API?

You use the Mistral API by creating an account in Mistral Studio (studio.mistral.ai), generating an API key and calling a model such as Mistral Small 4, Medium 3.5 or Large 3. Studio includes a free plan for experimenting.

Batch processing costs 50 percent less and cached input can be up to 90 percent cheaper, according to Mistral’s pricing page. Example: 30 million input and 15 million output tokens a month on Large 3 costs 30 x $0.50 = $15 plus 15 x $1.50 = $22.50, so $37.50; on Small 4 it is $4.50 plus $9, so $13.50. Use Small 4 for extraction and classification and save Large 3 for harder work, as explained in model routing. Compare all providers in our LLM API pricing comparison.

Who should use Mistral instead of ChatGPT or Claude?

Mistral suits teams that want a European AI provider, private or on-premise deployment, low API prices and open-weight models, plus individuals who want a capable assistant for less than $20 a month. ChatGPT and Claude still lead on breadth of features and top-end quality for many tasks.

• EU data needs: Mistral is headquartered in France and offers private deployments on Enterprise.
• Budget: Pro at $14.99 with API credits, and some of the cheapest capable API models.
• Open models: Mistral releases many open-weight models you can run yourself; see open-source AI models and running an LLM locally.
• Speech: Voxtral 3, released in October 2026, adds speech recognition and text-to-speech in 50+ languages with a voice agent SDK.

If you are exploring non-US AI options, also read our guides to Qwen and Kimi, keeping their data locations in mind.

Mistral Vibe vs ChatGPT vs Claude at a glance

Mistral Vibe, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude all offer a free plan, a paid individual plan, agents and an API, but they differ in price, data location and strengths. This table compares the entry options as of October 2026.

In everyday use, Mistral’s speed and price stand out, while ChatGPT and Claude offer more integrations and stronger results on the hardest reasoning and writing tasks. A sensible approach is to test the same five real prompts in each free plan before you pay.

Prompts to test Mistral Vibe

• “Summarize this 30-page PDF into ten bullet points with page references.”
• “Every Monday, scan my inbox for client requests and list them in a table with deadlines.” (Work Mode)
• “Write a Python script that cleans this CSV and explain each step.”
• “Translate this product page into French and German for European customers, keeping brand names unchanged.”
• “Create a five-slide summary of our quarterly numbers from this spreadsheet.”

Frequently asked questions

Get started with Mistral Vibe

Try Mistral Vibe’s free plan for a week of everyday questions and one Work Mode task, then decide whether Pro at $14.99 beats your current assistant. Developers should test Small 4 for high-volume jobs. Plans, limits and model prices change frequently, so check Mistral’s pricing page before you subscribe or build on the API.

Sources

• Mistral pricing, Mistral AI, checked 22 October 2026
• Mistral rebrands Le Chat as Vibe, The Decoder, May 2026, checked 22 October 2026
• Mistral API pricing 2026, DevTK, August 2026, checked 22 October 2026
• Mistral Vibe, Wikipedia, checked 22 October 2026