What is PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's search crawler. Perplexity says it is designed to surface and link websites in its search results, and is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.
Last verified 2026-09-30 against the operator's documentation. All bots
PerplexityBot at a glance
- Operator
- Perplexity
- Type
- AI search crawlers
- Purpose
- Surfaces and links websites in Perplexity's search results.
- robots.txt token
PerplexityBot- Example user agent
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)- How to verify
- Check that the source IP is in the ranges Perplexity publishes for PerplexityBot.
- Operator documentation
- https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots
How often is PerplexityBot impersonated?
For the median organisation, 21% of requests claiming to be PerplexityBot failed verification.
Measured between 3 July 2026 and 28 September 2026 across organisations protected by Centinel. We only publish a share when at least five organisations each saw enough of these requests. Pooled across all of their requests, the share was 13%: a few large organisations carry most of the traffic, so the median organisation is the better guide to what yours will see.
This directory measures requests between 3 July 2026 and 28 September 2026. The fake crawler report covers its own, earlier window (late June to 21 September 2026), so its figures differ from the ones here. Read it for the method.
Have a request that claims to be PerplexityBot? Check its IP address.
Should you block PerplexityBot?
- Allow it if
- you want Perplexity's answers to find and link your pages.
- Block it if
- you do not want your pages in Perplexity's search index.
- What blocking changes
- Your pages stop being crawled for Perplexity's search index, so they are less likely to be surfaced and linked in its answers.
To block it, add this group to your robots.txt. Perplexity documents robots.txt as the control for PerplexityBot.
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /robots.txt only asks. It does nothing against a client that ignores it or only pretends to be PerplexityBot. Stopping those takes verification at your edge.
PerplexityBot: common questions
See which bots reach your site, and which of them are who they claim to be.
What is PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's search crawler. Perplexity says it is designed to surface and link websites in its search results, and is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.
How do I verify that a request is really PerplexityBot?
Check that the source IP is in the ranges Perplexity publishes for PerplexityBot. The user agent alone proves nothing: any client can send it.
How do I block PerplexityBot in robots.txt?
Add a group for User-agent: PerplexityBot with Disallow: /. Perplexity documents robots.txt as the control for PerplexityBot. robots.txt only asks. A client that ignores it, or pretends to be PerplexityBot, has to be stopped at your edge.
What happens if I block PerplexityBot?
Your pages stop being crawled for Perplexity's search index, so they are less likely to be surfaced and linked in its answers.
Related bots
- Perplexity-User (Perplexity): Fetches a page when a Perplexity user's request needs it.
- OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI): Surfaces websites in ChatGPT's search features.
- Claude-SearchBot (Anthropic): Indexes pages to improve Claude's search results.
- DuckAssistBot (DuckDuckGo): Crawls in real time to support DuckDuckGo's AI-assisted answers.