Perplexity-User (Perplexity): what it is and how to allow or block it
Perplexity-User is the fetcher Perplexity uses to visit a page when a person's question needs it. Its robots.txt token is Perplexity-User.
Facts
- Operator
- Perplexity
- Category
- AI user-triggered fetcher
- robots.txt token
Perplexity-User
- Honors robots.txt?
- Generally ignored (user-initiated). Perplexity states that access is controlled by site-level settings rather than robots.txt.
- User-agent example
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user)
- Official source
- Perplexity: Bots and user agents
- Published IP ranges
- https://www.perplexity.com/perplexity-user.json
- Compared with the source
What it is used for
Handles user-initiated actions: when a user asks a question, it may visit a page to help answer and link to it. Perplexity says it is not used for crawling or training data. 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
Because a user requested the fetch, Perplexity says it generally ignores robots.txt rules for this agent.
How to allow or block Perplexity-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: Perplexity-User Allow: /
User-agent: Perplexity-User Disallow: /
Does your site allow Perplexity-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 Perplexity-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 Perplexity
Other AI user-triggered fetchers
- ChatGPT-User OpenAIThe fetcher ChatGPT uses when a person asks it to open or look at a web page.
- Claude-User AnthropicThe agent Claude uses to open a page when a person asks it a question that needs a website.
- 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 Perplexity · Which bots to allow or block · robots.txt generator · See a page as a bot