Model training · OpenAI
GPTBot
OpenAI's training crawler. Disallowing GPTBot signals that your content should not be used to train OpenAI's generative models. It has no effect on whether you appear in ChatGPT search.
- Operator
- OpenAI
- Purpose
- Model training
- Used for
- OpenAI foundation models
- Obeys robots.txt
- Yes
- robots.txt token
GPTBot- User-agent string
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; GPTBot/1.4; +https://openai.com/gptbot- IP list
- openai.com/gptbot.json
- Official docs
- developers.openai.com
- Feeds
- ChatGPT
Block GPTBot in robots.txt
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /Well-known sites that block GPTBot
facebook.com #4, fbcdn.net #7, instagram.com #14, amazon.com #30, whatsapp.net #42, whatsapp.com #66, yahoo.com #72, msn.com #92, t-online.de #129, snapchat.com #157, nytimes.com #163, gravatar.com #165, ebay.com #191, cnn.com #195, medium.com #198, bbc.com #216, sciencedirect.com #224, bbc.co.uk #236, canva.com #276, launchpad.net #281, nature.com #297, alibaba.com #310, amazon.co.uk #326, espn.com #363
Other OpenAI bots
OAI-SearchBot (ai search index) · ChatGPT-User (user-triggered fetch) · OAI-AdsBot (ad verification) · ChatGPT Agent (ai agent)
Questions
What is GPTBot?
GPTBot is a model training bot operated by OpenAI, used for OpenAI foundation models. OpenAI's training crawler. Disallowing GPTBot signals that your content should not be used to train OpenAI's generative models. It has no effect on whether you appear in ChatGPT search.
How do I block GPTBot?
Add "User-agent: GPTBot" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of each host you want to protect.
Does GPTBot respect robots.txt?
Yes. OpenAI documents that GPTBot honours robots.txt directives.
How many websites block GPTBot?
In a Oct 29, 2026 analysis of the top 10,000 websites by Kuldeep Paul, 17.9% of sites with a robots.txt file fully disallowed GPTBot.
Analysis using this data
- Who blocks AI crawlers? What 10,000 robots.txt files revealPublishers block training, not answers; half of all blocklists leak; Cloudflare writes the most common AI policy.
- The opt-out asymmetry: you can block the small AI engines, not the big oneThe AI surfaces with the most users are the ones publishers can't refuse and can't measure.
How to cite this data
This dataset is free to use, including commercially, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. The one rule is attribution:
- Credit the source as “Kuldeep Paul, kuldeep.cc” wherever you use a figure, chart or table from it.
- Link to this page (https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/crawlers/gptbot), not to the download file, so readers can check the source of every number.
- Include the date. These figures change; say “as of Oct 29, 2026” or link to the version you used.
- Mark changes. If you filter, recalculate or chart the data yourself, say so (“analysis based on data from…”).
- Cite the original source for single figures when you quote one reported number; it is linked in every row.
In running text: according to Kuldeep Paul's GPTBot — AI crawler directory (kuldeep.cc). More in the methodology.
Paul, K. (2026). GPTBot — AI crawler directory [Data set]. kuldeep.cc. https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/crawlers/gptbot
Paul, Kuldeep. "GPTBot — AI crawler directory." kuldeep.cc, 29 October 2026, https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/crawlers/gptbot.
Paul, Kuldeep. 2026. "GPTBot — AI crawler directory." Dataset. kuldeep.cc. Updated Oct 29, 2026. https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/crawlers/gptbot.
@misc{paul2026gptbot, author = {Paul, Kuldeep}, title = {GPTBot — AI crawler directory}, year = {2026}, howpublished = {\url{https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/crawlers/gptbot}}, note = {Dataset, CC BY 4.0, updated 2026-10-29} }
<a href="https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/crawlers/gptbot">GPTBot — AI crawler directory</a> (data: Kuldeep Paul, kuldeep.cc)