AI search index · Perplexity AI
PerplexityBot
Crawls to surface and link websites in Perplexity results. Perplexity says it is not used to crawl content for foundation-model training.
- Operator
- Perplexity AI
- Purpose
- AI search index
- Used for
- Perplexity search index
- Obeys robots.txt
- Yes
- robots.txt token
PerplexityBot- User-agent string
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)- IP list
- www.perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json
- Official docs
- docs.perplexity.ai
- Feeds
- Perplexity
Block PerplexityBot in robots.txt
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /Blocking a search or user-triggered bot removes your pages from that assistant's answers. To opt out of model training only, block the operator's training crawler instead.
Well-known sites that block PerplexityBot
facebook.com #4, fbcdn.net #7, instagram.com #14, amazon.com #30, whatsapp.net #42, whatsapp.com #66, yahoo.com #72, amazonvideo.com #85, msn.com #92, chatgpt.com #112, t-online.de #129, nytimes.com #163, ebay.com #191, cnn.com #195, theguardian.com #196, bbc.com #216, sciencedirect.com #224, bbc.co.uk #236, launchpad.net #281, nature.com #297, amazon.co.uk #326, washingtonpost.com #383, bloomberg.com #386, amazon.de #387
Other Perplexity AI bots
Perplexity-User (user-triggered fetch)
Questions
What is PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot is a ai search index bot operated by Perplexity AI, used for Perplexity search index. Crawls to surface and link websites in Perplexity results. Perplexity says it is not used to crawl content for foundation-model training.
How do I block PerplexityBot?
Add "User-agent: PerplexityBot" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of each host you want to protect.
Does PerplexityBot respect robots.txt?
Yes. Perplexity AI documents that PerplexityBot honours robots.txt directives.
How many websites block PerplexityBot?
In a Oct 29, 2026 analysis of the top 10,000 websites by Kuldeep Paul, 11.1% of sites with a robots.txt file fully disallowed PerplexityBot.
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/perplexitybot), 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 PerplexityBot — AI crawler directory (kuldeep.cc). More in the methodology.
Paul, K. (2026). PerplexityBot — AI crawler directory [Data set]. kuldeep.cc. https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/crawlers/perplexitybot
Paul, Kuldeep. "PerplexityBot — AI crawler directory." kuldeep.cc, 29 October 2026, https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/crawlers/perplexitybot.
Paul, Kuldeep. 2026. "PerplexityBot — AI crawler directory." Dataset. kuldeep.cc. Updated Oct 29, 2026. https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/crawlers/perplexitybot.
@misc{paul2026perplexitybot, author = {Paul, Kuldeep}, title = {PerplexityBot — AI crawler directory}, year = {2026}, howpublished = {\url{https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/crawlers/perplexitybot}}, note = {Dataset, CC BY 4.0, updated 2026-10-29} }
<a href="https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/crawlers/perplexitybot">PerplexityBot — AI crawler directory</a> (data: Kuldeep Paul, kuldeep.cc)