AI crawler index
What is ChatGPT-User?
ChatGPT-User is OpenAI's fetcher for pages users ask about. Visits a page when a user asks ChatGPT or a custom GPT a question that needs it, and for GPT Actions.
At a glance
| Operator | OpenAI |
|---|---|
| Purpose | User-triggered fetch |
| User agent | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot |
| Obeys robots.txt | Not always: the operator says user-requested visits may ignore it |
| Published IP ranges | https://openai.com/chatgpt-user.json |
| How to verify it | OpenAI publishes its IP ranges as JSON; match the source IP against them. |
| Official documentation | https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots |
Should you block ChatGPT-User?
It visits a page only when a user asks the assistant something that needs it. Blocking it stops the assistant from reading your page in those moments, which costs you citations; and because a person starts each request, robots.txt may not stop it.
Because a user starts each visit, OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply. It does not decide whether you appear in ChatGPT search: OAI-SearchBot does.
How to block or allow ChatGPT-User in robots.txt
Block it everywhere:
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /Allow it everywhere:
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /Rules are matched by the token on the User-agent line. Test the result with the robots.txt tester before you publish it.
Other OpenAI crawlers
- GPTBot: AI training
- OAI-SearchBot: AI search
Check your own site
The AI crawler checker tells you which AI crawlers your robots.txt lets in, and the log file analyzer shows how often each one actually visits. For the bigger picture, see what AI crawlers are and the full AI crawler index.
FAQ
ChatGPT-User questions
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