ChatGPT-User
ChatGPT-User fetches a page when a ChatGPT user or a Custom GPT asks for it, for example to read a link pasted into a chat. OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to these user-initiated visits, and that ChatGPT-User does not decide whether content appears in ChatGPT search.
What it does
OpenAI uses ChatGPT-User for certain user actions in ChatGPT and Custom GPTs. It visits a page because a person asked for it, not as part of automatic crawling of the web.
OpenAI states that because these actions are initiated by a user, robots.txt rules may not apply. It also says ChatGPT-User is not used to determine whether content may appear in search; that is controlled by OAI-SearchBot. Blocking it at the firewall makes the fetch fail, so a user who asks about your page gets an answer without it.
In our 2026-11 study, 12.9% of popular sites with a robots.txt blocked it. →
robots.txt token
ChatGPT-User
User-agent string
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/botHow to allow it
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /How to block it
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /How to verify real visits
OpenAI publishes the IP ranges this agent uses as a JSON file. Match the source IP of the request against those ranges; a request that names ChatGPT-User but comes from another address is not from OpenAI. OpenAI notes the version number in the user agent may change, so match the ChatGPT-User token rather than the full string.
Check if your site lets it in →
OpenAI crawlers explained: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User →