# Perplexity-User

> Visits a page when a Perplexity user's question needs it and links to that page in the answer. Not used for general crawling or training.

Canonical page: https://getrankroot.com/ai-bots/perplexity-user · Facts checked against Perplexity docs on 2026-10-20

| Operator | Used for | Type | Obeys robots.txt |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Perplexity | Perplexity (user requests) | User-triggered fetcher | Not reliably |

## Should you allow it?

Leave it allowed. It only fetches pages users are asking about, and links back to you.

**If you block it:** Little effect via robots.txt: Perplexity says this fetcher generally ignores it.

Perplexity says this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt because a user requested the fetch.

## robots.txt rules

Allow Perplexity-User:

```
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /
```

Block Perplexity-User:

```
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Disallow: /
```

Disallow Perplexity-User from one folder only:

```
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /
```

A bot follows the most specific User-agent group that names it and ignores the generic `User-agent: *` group, so repeat any shared Disallow lines inside it.

This fetcher does not reliably follow robots.txt, so a Disallow rule may have little effect.

## Same company, different bots: Perplexity

| Bot | Type | Purpose | Obeys robots.txt | If you block it |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [PerplexityBot](https://getrankroot.com/ai-bots/perplexitybot.md) | AI search index | Perplexity search | Yes | Your site is no longer surfaced and linked in Perplexity search results. |
| [Perplexity-User](https://getrankroot.com/ai-bots/perplexity-user.md) | User-triggered fetcher | Perplexity (user requests) | Not reliably | Little effect via robots.txt: Perplexity says this fetcher generally ignores it. |

## User agent string

```
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user)
```

## How to verify it's really Perplexity-User

Find its requests in your server logs:

```
grep -i "Perplexity-User" access.log
```

Perplexity recommends combining user agent matching with its published IP ranges, and refreshing the ranges regularly because they change.

Published IP list: https://www.perplexity.com/perplexity-user.json

## Common mistakes

- Expecting a robots.txt Disallow to stop it. Perplexity says it generally ignores robots.txt; to stay out of Perplexity search results, PerplexityBot is the token that matters.
- Writing a User-agent: Perplexity-User group and expecting your User-agent: * rules to still apply. A crawler follows only the most specific group that matches it and ignores the others, so repeat any shared Disallow lines inside the Perplexity-User group.
- Leaving a CDN or host "block AI bots" setting on and only checking robots.txt. Those settings block requests at the network edge. Cloudflare, for example, changed its defaults on September 15, 2026 for customers who did not opt out: bots it classifies as Training or Agent are blocked on pages that display ads, and multi-purpose crawlers that combine Search and Training are affected by the Training block.
- Trusting the user agent header alone. Anyone can send "Perplexity-User" in a request; verify the source IP as shown above before allowlisting or blocking.

## FAQ

### What is Perplexity-User?

Visits a page when a Perplexity user's question needs it and links to that page in the answer. Not used for general crawling or training.

### Does Perplexity-User respect robots.txt?

Not reliably. Perplexity says user-requested fetches may not follow robots.txt.

### What happens if I block Perplexity-User?

Little effect via robots.txt: Perplexity says this fetcher generally ignores it.

### Should I block Perplexity-User?

Leave it allowed. It only fetches pages users are asking about, and links back to you.

### Is Perplexity-User used for training?

No. Perplexity says it is not used for web crawling or to collect content for training AI foundation models.

### What is the difference between PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User?

PerplexityBot crawls to surface and link websites in Perplexity search results and follows robots.txt. Perplexity-User fetches a page live when a user's question needs it and generally ignores robots.txt.

## Sources

- [Official documentation from Perplexity](https://docs.perplexity.ai/docs/resources/perplexity-crawlers)
- [Published IP addresses for Perplexity-User](https://www.perplexity.com/perplexity-user.json)

Check whether Perplexity-User can reach a site: https://getrankroot.com/tools/ai-crawler-checker or `GET https://getrankroot.com/api/bots?url=example.com`. Full list: https://getrankroot.com/ai-bots.md