Perplexity-User user agent
Operated by Perplexity
Perplexity-User is the user agent Perplexity uses when it visits a page to answer a specific user question.
The Perplexity-User bot at a glance
- Perplexity-User is operated by Perplexity and fetches a page when a person asks an AI assistant about it or shares its link.
- The robots.txt token for Perplexity-User is Perplexity-User.
- Blocking an AI assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings.
- Perplexity-User robots.txt support: Not for user-requested fetches.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Perplexity-User?
Perplexity-User fetches pages on behalf of a Perplexity user, for example to read a link inside a cited answer.
Perplexity states that, because a user requested the fetch, Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt rules.
Should you block Perplexity-User?
Allow Perplexity-User unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking stops the assistant from reading your page when a user asks about it or pastes your link, so its answer falls back to other sources. |
| Follows robots.txt | Not for user-requested fetches |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow Perplexity-User
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token Perplexity-User is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop Perplexity-User, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block Perplexity-User
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Perplexity-User
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Perplexity-User out of private areas only
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Perplexity-User
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Perplexity\-User)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Perplexity-User
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Perplexity\-User) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Perplexity-User")How to verify real Perplexity-User traffic
Perplexity publishes the IP ranges that Perplexity-User uses. A request with the Perplexity-User user agent from an IP outside that list is an impersonator.
How to find Perplexity-User in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Perplexity-User requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Perplexity-User" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Perplexity-User user agent string
The full user agent Perplexity publishes for Perplexity-User. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user)Perplexity-User FAQ
Perplexity-User identifies itself with the robots.txt token "Perplexity-User". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user)
Partly. Perplexity-User fetches pages because a user asked for them, and Perplexity says robots.txt rules may not apply to those user-requested fetches. Use a firewall rule if you must stop it.
Blocking an AI assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings. Blocking stops the assistant from reading your page when a user asks about it or pastes your link, so its answer falls back to other sources.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Perplexity-User" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Yes. Perplexity publishes the IP ranges Perplexity-User uses. Check the request IP against that list; a matching user agent from any other IP is an impersonator.
Search your server access log for "Perplexity-User", for example with: grep -i "Perplexity-User" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Perplexity crawler documentation. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
