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BOT PAGE · PERPLEXITY · REVIEWED 2026-09-13
PerplexityBot: what it is, and how to allow or block it
PerplexityBot is the crawler Perplexity uses to build the search index its answers quote from. It is one of two Perplexity tokens, and the other one behaves differently. This page gives you the exact user-agent token, what Perplexity does and does not say about it, the robots.txt lines, and how to tell whether it has been to your site.
Where this comes from. Every statement about what PerplexityBot does is quoted from, or read directly off, Perplexity's own crawler page — docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots, read 2026-09-13. Where that page does not settle something, this page says so rather than filling the gap with something plausible. The token is spelled exactly as it appears on the AI bot list and in the AI Crawler Checker.
THE FACT SHEET
What PerplexityBot is, and who runs it
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's search crawler: it visits pages so that Perplexity can surface and link to them in its search results. Perplexity states it is not used to collect content for AI foundation models. That makes it an answer route, not a training crawler.
PerplexityBot
Run by Perplexity
- PurposeSearch index. Perplexity: “designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity.”
- KindAnswer route
- robots.txtA published robots.txt token. Perplexity says changes may take up to 24 hours to be reflected. See what it does not say.
- TrainingNot used for foundation models — Perplexity's own statement, quoted below.
- IP rangesperplexity.com/perplexitybot.json
- Sourcedocs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots
Perplexity documents two visitors that can arrive at a site under its name, and they do two different jobs. PerplexityBot crawls to build the search index. Perplexity-User opens a page because a person asked Perplexity a question that needed it. Blocking one and allowing the other are two different decisions, which is exactly why both tokens exist.
Perplexity's own words for this one: “PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity. It is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.” And its advice: “To ensure your site appears in search results, we recommend allowing PerplexityBot in your site's robots.txt file and permitting requests from our published IP ranges listed below.”
Source: docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots, PerplexityBot section, read 2026-09-13.A search crawler that is documented as separate from training is the least ambiguous kind of visitor on the list. The decision it asks of you is narrow: do you want your pages available to be quoted in Perplexity's answers, or not. Nothing about model training rides on it, by the operator's own account.
SPELLED EXACTLY
The exact user-agent token, and the full string it arrives with
The token you write in robots.txt is PerplexityBot: one word, capital P, capital B, no hyphen. The hyphen belongs to the other token, Perplexity-User, and the two are distinct strings once the whole token is required.
PerplexityBot
This is the product token a robots.txt group names. Matching is case-insensitive, so perplexitybot also matches — but copy it as published.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)
The token is what to look for in a log, not the whole string; the version number and the browser-like prefix can change without notice.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user)
Perplexity-User is the on-request fetcher. A rule written for PerplexityBot does not reach it, and Perplexity says it generally ignores robots.txt rules anyway.
Why the two names matter in a log
A plain search for Perplexity in an access log matches both tokens at once and counts a person's one-off request as a crawl. The AI Crawler Log Analyzer requires the whole token for exactly this reason, and reports the two separately.
ONLY WHAT THE OPERATOR DOCUMENTS
What PerplexityBot does, and what Perplexity does not say
PerplexityBot is documented as a search crawler that is not used for foundation-model training. What Perplexity's page does not spell out is stated below rather than assumed.
What Perplexity states
It is for search. “PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity.”
It is not a training crawler. “It is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.”
robots.txt is the control, and it is independent. “Webmasters can use the following robots.txt tags to manage how their sites and content interact with Perplexity. Each setting works independently, and it may take up to 24 hours for our systems to reflect changes.”
Allowing it is what Perplexity recommends for appearing in results. “To ensure your site appears in search results, we recommend allowing PerplexityBot in your site's robots.txt file.”
What Perplexity does not say
It does not state, in a sentence of its own, what a Disallow does. OpenAI's page says an opted-out site “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers”; Perplexity's page has no equivalent sentence for PerplexityBot. It presents robots.txt as the way to manage the crawler and says changes take up to 24 hours, and this page reads that as the crawler honouring the file — but the exact effect of a block on your appearance in results is not written down.
It does not say how often it crawls, or what it does with a page it fetched before a rule changed.
It does not say anything about ranking. Nothing on this page should be read as a claim about where you appear, only about whether the crawler can read you.
PerplexityBot
Answer routeThe crawler. Builds the search index Perplexity's answers quote from. Documented as not used for foundation-model training. This page.
Perplexity-User
Fetch on requestPerplexity: “supports user actions within Perplexity. When users ask Perplexity a question, it might visit a web page to help provide an accurate answer and include a link to the page in its response.”
And: “Since a user requested the fetch, this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt rules.” Perplexity also states it “is not used for web crawling or to collect content for training AI foundation models.”
The sentence this site will stand behind is narrow. Blocking PerplexityBot removes your pages from what the crawler can read for Perplexity's index. Whether Perplexity will then name you anyway, from other sites that describe you, is not something a robots.txt can control — and it is not something this page measures.
THE FILE
How to allow or block PerplexityBot in robots.txt
A robots.txt group for PerplexityBot is a User-agent: PerplexityBot line followed by its own complete set of rules. Two files below cover the two decisions people actually make; change nothing else until you have read the warning under them.
# Available to Perplexity's search index. This is what # Perplexity recommends for appearing in its results. User-agent: PerplexityBot Allow: /
A file with no rule for PerplexityBot allows it by default. Writing the group out makes the decision visible — and means a later catch-all Disallow cannot catch it by accident.
# Out of Perplexity's crawl. Perplexity says it may take # up to 24 hours for its systems to reflect the change. User-agent: PerplexityBot Disallow: /
This does not govern Perplexity-User, which Perplexity says generally ignores robots.txt because a person asked for the page.
Why every group is written in full
A crawler obeys exactly one group. If any group names PerplexityBot, the User-agent: * group is ignored entirely for it — every rule you meant it to inherit is gone. Where several groups match, the longest matching user-agent value wins.
So naming this bot to tighten one thing is how sites accidentally loosen everything else. A named group has to repeat every rule you still want.
Do it with the tools instead of by hand
The robots.txt generator writes a complete group per token for exactly this reason. The AI Crawler Checker then reads your real, live file and reports which group PerplexityBot actually lands in, with the line that decided it.
After a change, remember Perplexity's own figure: up to 24 hours before its systems reflect it.
REQUEST, NOT LOCK
How to see whether PerplexityBot actually visited
robots.txt is a request, not a lock. It tells a well-behaved crawler what you would like; it stops nothing by itself. The only place a visit is recorded is your own server's access log, and that is where to look.
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Step 1 · your file
Read what your robots.txt actually says
Not what you meant it to say. The AI Crawler Checker fetches your live robots.txt and returns one verdict for PerplexityBot — allowed, blocked, or not measured — with the exact rule line and group behind it.
A CDN can serve a stale copy of the file; this site's own robots.txt did that for a day, and every cache-busted check said it was fine.
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Step 2 · your log
Look for the whole token in your access log
Paste a day of your server log into the AI Crawler Log Analyzer. It reads in your browser tab and reports which of twelve AI tokens appeared, when, what each asked for and what your server returned. Nothing is uploaded.
It requires the whole token, so a Perplexity-User request is never counted as a PerplexityBot crawl. A line carrying PerplexityBot and a request for /robots.txt is the crawler reading your rules.
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Step 3 · the claim
Check the address, because the string is a claim
A user-agent string is what the visitor says about itself, and any software can send any string. Perplexity publishes the addresses its crawler uses at perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json; a request claiming to be PerplexityBot from outside those ranges is not Perplexity.
Perplexity's page goes further and gives firewall guidance that matches on the token and the address together. That is the right shape for any allow rule: the string alone proves nothing.
One more line worth drawing: a visit in your log is not a citation in an answer. PerplexityBot fetching a page means the page could be in the index; whether Perplexity then names you when a buyer asks is a separate measurement, and the AI Visibility Checker is the tool that asks.
QUESTIONS
Before you change a live robots.txt
What is the PerplexityBot user agent?
The robots.txt token is PerplexityBot, one word with a capital P and a capital B. The full string Perplexity publishes is Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot). The token is what a robots.txt group names and what to search for in a log; the rest of the string can change.
Does PerplexityBot respect robots.txt?
Perplexity publishes PerplexityBot as a robots.txt token, says webmasters can use it to manage how their sites interact with Perplexity, and says changes may take up to 24 hours to be reflected. Its page does not add a separate sentence stating what a Disallow does to your appearance in results. Read that as the crawler honouring the file, with the exact consequence of a block left unstated by the operator.
Is PerplexityBot used to train AI models?
Perplexity says no: PerplexityBot is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models. It is documented as a search crawler whose job is to surface and link websites in Perplexity's results. Whether that statement holds is Perplexity's to keep; this page quotes it and does not measure it.
What is the difference between PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User?
PerplexityBot crawls on its own to build the search index. Perplexity-User fetches a page because a person asked Perplexity a question that needed it, and Perplexity says that fetcher generally ignores robots.txt rules because a user requested the fetch. A rule written for one token does not reach the other, and blocking one while allowing the other is a coherent position.
Does blocking PerplexityBot affect Google?
PerplexityBot is a Perplexity token and has no part in Google Search. Blocking it changes what Perplexity's crawler can read. Googlebot is a different visitor with a different token, and it is deliberately not discussed on this page.
How do I know it obeyed my file?
Not from the file. A robots.txt is a request, and the only record of a visit is your own access log. Look for the whole token there, and check the requesting address against the ranges Perplexity publishes, because a user-agent string is a claim any software can make.
Every answer above is either a quotation from Perplexity's crawler page, read 2026-09-13, or a statement about how robots.txt and access logs work. None of it is a measurement of your site.
ONE TOKEN, ONE VERDICT
Read your real robots.txt
against PerplexityBot.
The AI Crawler Checker fetches your live file and reports what it says to this crawler and eleven others, with the exact rule line and the group that produced it. A row it cannot read comes back as not measured, never as allowed.