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What is Perplexity-User? How to allow or block Perplexity's crawler

User-agent string to match in robots.txt and server logs: Perplexity-User

Operator

Perplexity

Purpose

AI search & live answers

robots.txt

Ignores robots.txt

Official docs

Perplexity documentation ↗

Perplexity-User fetches a specific page when a Perplexity user's question requires it. Because each fetch is directly user-initiated, Perplexity treats it like a browser rather than a crawler — which is also why it generally does not obey robots.txt.

Does Perplexity-User respect robots.txt?

Perplexity's own documentation says Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt because fetches are user-requested.

Verify it's really Perplexity-User

The user-agent string above is self-declared, so anything can send it. Perplexity publishes Perplexity-User's IP ranges as JSON, which is what makes a rule verifiable: check the request's IP against the published prefixes instead of trusting the name. Requests claiming to be Perplexity-User from outside those ranges are spoofed — useful to know whether you're allowing or blocking it.

Block Perplexity-User with robots.txt

robots.txt — block
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Disallow: /

⚠ Because Perplexity-User's robots.txt compliance is unreliable, pair this with a firewall or CDN rule matching the user-agent string if blocking actually matters to you.

Explicitly allow Perplexity-User

robots.txt — allow
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /

Block Perplexity-User at the server or CDN

Perplexity-User's robots.txt compliance is absent, so a robots.txt rule alone may not stop it. These enforce the block. Matching on the user-agent string still trusts a self-declared header — pair it with an IP check against the published ranges above for a rule that can't be spoofed.

nginx
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Perplexity-User") {
    return 403;
}
apache — .htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Perplexity-User [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
cloudflare — WAF expression
(http.user_agent contains "Perplexity-User")

Find Perplexity-User in your server logs

shell
grep -i "Perplexity-User" /var/log/nginx/access.log | wc -l

Should you block Perplexity-User?

For most sites, no. Perplexity-User powers visibility: blocking it removes your pages from the cited answers Perplexity's assistant shows its users — the AI-era equivalent of de-indexing yourself from a search engine. Block it only if you deliberately don't want that audience. Our guide on blocking AI bots covers the trade-offs in detail.

Check and monitor Perplexity-User on your site

Related reading

Frequently asked questions

What is Perplexity-User?

Perplexity-User is Perplexity's agent for AI search and live answers. Fetches a page a user asks Perplexity to browse live.

Does Perplexity-User respect robots.txt?

Perplexity's own documentation says Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt because fetches are user-requested.

How do I block Perplexity-User?

Add "User-agent: Perplexity-User" followed by "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt file. Because this bot's robots.txt compliance is not reliable, enforce the block with firewall or CDN rules (for example a Cloudflare WAF rule matching the user agent) if it matters to you.

Does blocking Perplexity-User hurt my Google rankings?

No. Perplexity-User is separate from Googlebot, which handles Google Search indexing. Blocking Perplexity-User has no effect on your traditional search rankings, but it does remove your pages from the AI answers Perplexity's assistant serves to its users.

How can I tell if Perplexity-User is crawling my site?

Search your server access logs for the string "Perplexity-User" — for example: grep -i "Perplexity-User" /var/log/nginx/access.log | wc -l. Our free AI Bot Log Analyzer does this in your browser: paste a log file and it counts hits per AI crawler, including Perplexity-User, with per-path breakdowns.

How do I use Perplexity-User?

You don't — Perplexity-User isn't a tool you run. It's Perplexity's own crawler, operated by Perplexity, that visits your site from their infrastructure. The only control you have over it is whether you allow or block it, via robots.txt or a server rule. If you're looking to crawl other sites yourself, you'd write your own crawler or use a crawling library; sending "Perplexity-User" as your user agent would be impersonating Perplexity.

Does Perplexity-User respect crawl-delay?

Almost certainly not. Crawl-delay was never part of the original robots.txt specification — Google has publicly said it ignores the directive, and the AI crawlers that model their parsers on Google's do the same. Perplexity publishes no position on crawl-delay for Perplexity-User, so treat it as unsupported. If Perplexity-User is hitting your site harder than you want, rate-limit it at the server or CDN instead: a Cloudflare rate-limiting rule or an nginx limit_req zone matched on the user agent will actually be enforced, whereas a crawl-delay line is only a request that this agent likely never reads.

Why is Perplexity-User ignoring my robots.txt?

Perplexity makes no enforceable commitment that Perplexity-User honors robots.txt, so the plain answer may be that it simply does not. Before assuming that, rule out the ordinary causes: a cached copy of robots.txt from before your change, a user-agent line that does not actually match, or a block placed in a group this agent does not read. If the hits continue after those are excluded, robots.txt is not going to stop this agent and you need a firewall or CDN rule that returns 403.

Does Perplexity-User execute JavaScript?

Treat it as no unless Perplexity says otherwise. Rendering JavaScript costs an order of magnitude more than fetching HTML, and most AI crawlers — unlike Googlebot, which runs a full headless Chrome — read the raw HTML response and stop there. The practical consequence: anything your page loads client-side after the initial response is likely invisible to Perplexity-User. If your main content is client-rendered, server-render it or pre-render it so the text exists in the first response.

What are Perplexity-User's IP ranges?

Perplexity publishes them as JSON at https://www.perplexity.ai/perplexity-user.json, updated as their infrastructure changes. Fetch that file rather than hard-coding the prefixes, and match the request IP against it to confirm a visit is genuinely Perplexity-User. This is the only reliable check — the user-agent header is self-declared, so a scraper can send "Perplexity-User" while coming from anywhere.

How often does Perplexity-User crawl my site?

There is no fixed schedule. Perplexity-User serves live answers, so its crawl rate tracks demand — pages that come up in Perplexity conversations get fetched more often, and a site nobody asks about may see it rarely or never. Frequency also rises with how often your pages change and how many links point at them. The only way to know for your own site is to measure it: grep your access log for the user agent, or paste the log into our AI Bot Log Analyzer, which breaks hits down by date and path in your browser.

Where is the official Perplexity documentation for Perplexity-User?

Perplexity publishes it at https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots. That page is the authoritative source for the user-agent string and Perplexity's stated crawling policy, and Perplexity also publishes Perplexity-User's IP ranges as JSON at https://www.perplexity.ai/perplexity-user.json so you can verify requests rather than trusting the header.

Commonly confused with

Other AI crawlers

Part of our directory of every known AI crawler, refreshed monthly. Last verified: 2026-09-13.