ChatGPT-User (OpenAI): what it is and how to allow or block it
ChatGPT-User is the fetcher ChatGPT uses when a person asks it to open or look at a web page. Its robots.txt token is ChatGPT-User.
Facts
- Operator
- OpenAI
- Category
- AI user-triggered fetcher
- robots.txt token
ChatGPT-User
- Honors robots.txt?
- May not apply (user-initiated). OpenAI notes that robots.txt rules may not apply, because these requests are initiated by a user.
- User-agent example
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot
- Official source
- OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers
- Published IP ranges
- https://openai.com/chatgpt-user.json
- Compared with the source
What it is used for
Handles user-initiated actions in ChatGPT and Custom GPTs, for example visiting a page to answer a question. Opens one page because a person (or an answer being generated) needs it. The operator may treat robots.txt differently for these requests.
What happens if you block it
OpenAI says it is not used for automatic crawling and does not decide whether you appear in search.
How to allow or block ChatGPT-User
Add one of these groups to the robots.txt at the root of your domain. A group that names the bot overrides a general User-agent: * group.
User-agent: ChatGPT-User Allow: /
User-agent: ChatGPT-User Disallow: /
Does your site allow ChatGPT-User today? The checker evaluates your robots.txt for this and every other bot.Check my site
What we see on our own sites
No request identifying as ChatGPT-User has been recorded in the last 30 days, so there is nothing to show yet. We never fill this in with estimates.
Counts come from the websites we operate; they hold no IP addresses or URLs, and a user agent is only a claim. See the bot traffic data and the methodology.
Related bots
More from OpenAI
- GPTBot AI training crawlerOpenAI's crawler for content that may be used to train its generative AI models.
- OAI-SearchBot AI search crawlerOpenAI's crawler that surfaces websites in ChatGPT's search features.
Other AI user-triggered fetchers
- Claude-User AnthropicThe agent Claude uses to open a page when a person asks it a question that needs a website.
- Perplexity-User PerplexityThe fetcher Perplexity uses to visit a page when a person's question needs it.
- meta-externalfetcher MetaMeta's fetcher that retrieves individual URLs when a user asks, for example to help an AI complete a task.
- DuckAssistBot DuckDuckGoDuckDuckGo's crawler that fetches pages in real time for its AI-assisted answers.
All AI User-Triggered Fetchers · Bot directory · Bots from OpenAI · Which bots to allow or block · robots.txt generator · See a page as a bot