Perplexity-User
Fetches a page when a Perplexity user's question needs it, and may link it in the answer. Perplexity says it generally ignores robots.txt.
| Operator | Perplexity |
|---|---|
| Type | AI: fetch on a user's request |
| robots.txt token | Perplexity-User |
| Follows robots.txt | No; Crawl-delay not documented |
| Sends visitors | Yes |
| Links to your pages | Yes |
| Can end up in AI training | No |
| Verification |
IP list
Our tracker checks the IP list. |
| Our call |
Publisher: Allow E-commerce: Allow Expert site: Allow What the profiles mean |
How to recognize it
User agent, as Perplexity documents it (the scanner on our sites sent the same string):
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user)
Match on the token Perplexity-User, then check the IP. On our sites not one request with this user agent was real.
- robots.txt token:
Perplexity-User, though Perplexity says the fetcher generally ignores it. - IP list (JSON): perplexity-user.json. The docs link it under
perplexity.com, which redirects here. - Reverse DNS: none published by Perplexity.
What it does
When a Perplexity user asks a question, Perplexity-User may visit a page to help answer it and link to that page in the answer. Perplexity says it is not used for crawling or for collecting training data. Because a user asked for the fetch, it generally ignores robots.txt.
What you gain by allowing it
- Your page can be read and linked in an answer at the moment someone asks about it.
What you lose
By allowing it
- Your content is summarised for a user who may not click through.
By blocking it
- robots.txt will not do it. Blocking needs a firewall rule on the IP list. Then Perplexity answers questions about your pages without reading them.
How to verify it
Match the IP against perplexity-user.json; the one-liner on the GPTBot card works with this URL. As with PerplexityBot, Cloudflare’s verified-bot flag does not cover it.
Gotchas and history
- It is one of the 28 names the scanner rotates through, and on our sites the costume was all we saw. Any count of “Perplexity-User visits” built from user agents alone is wrong here by the whole amount.
- Perplexity says its systems can take up to 24 hours to reflect robots.txt changes. For this fetcher that matters little, since it generally ignores the file.
What we observed
Data: Cloudflare Logpush for two of our sites, 19-26 October 2026 (8 days).
- 746 requests carried a Perplexity-User user agent. None came from Perplexity’s list, and all 746 came from the Google Cloud scanner.
About Perplexity
- PerplexityBot finds and links websites for Perplexity’s search results. Perplexity says it is not used to collect content for training foundation models.
- Perplexity-User opens a page when a user’s question needs it, and may link to that page in the answer. Perplexity says it generally ignores robots.txt, because a user asked for the fetch.
Perplexity tells site owners to manage both through robots.txt, and recommends checking the user agent together with the IP lists in a firewall. It says robots.txt changes can take up to 24 hours to apply.
The docs link the lists under perplexity.com, which redirects to perplexity.ai.
In August 2025 Cloudflare reported that Perplexity switched to an undeclared browser user agent and unlisted IPs when its declared crawler was blocked. Cloudflare removed Perplexity from its verified bots. On our sites, Cloudflare still did not flag a single PerplexityBot request as verified in October 2026, including those from Perplexity’s own list.