AI crawler directory / ChatGPT-User
ChatGPT-User robots.txt reference.
OpenAI's user-initiated fetcher for certain ChatGPT, Custom GPT, and GPT Action requests.
What ChatGPT-User is documented to do
This summary is tied to a first-party operator page reviewed on Aug 13, 2026. It should be rechecked when the registry version changes.
- Operator
- OpenAI
- Documented purpose
- User-requested fetch
- Separate HTTP fetcher
- Documented as a fetcher or crawler
- Official documentation
- https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots
- Important operator note
- OpenAI says this is not an automatic web crawler, robots.txt rules may not apply, and it does not control ChatGPT Search inclusion.
Common full-site robots.txt block pattern
This example states a crawl preference for the named token. It does not authenticate requests, enforce blocking, or automatically control another token from the same operator.
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /Check the official operator source before publishing a policy. User-requested fetchers and non-fetcher control tokens can have different behavior from automatic crawlers.
Latest observed pilot policies
These states are calculated from each domain's latest available robots.txt record using the versioned CrawlLedger parser. They are observations of published text, not proof of crawler behavior.
| Domain | Parsed state | Matched group | Last observed |
|---|---|---|---|
| anthropic.com | allowed | * | |
| apnews.com | partial | * | |
| apple.com | partial | * | |
| cloudflare.com | allowed | ChatGPT-User | |
| commoncrawl.org | partial | * | |
| google.com | partial | *, Yandex | |
| medium.com | partial | * | |
| openai.com | partial | * | |
| oreilly.com | partial | ChatGPT-User, ChatGPT-User/2.0, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, DuckAssistBot, Applebot, bingbot, Googlebot | |
| perplexity.ai | partial | * | |
| quora.com | disallowed | ChatGPT-User | |
| reddit.com | disallowed | * | |
| rslcollective.org | allowed | * | |
| rslstandard.org | allowed | * | |
| stackoverflow.com | unverified | No matching group observed | |
| theguardian.com | partial | * | |
| usatoday.com | disallowed | ChatGPT-User | |
| voxmedia.com | partial | * | |
| yahoo.com | disallowed | ADmantX, AlphaBot, anthropic-ai, AwarioRssBot, AwarioSmartBot, BLEXBot, Buzzbot, Bytespider, CCBot, ChatGPT-User, claritybot, Claude-Web, ClaudeBot, cohere-ai, Diffbot, FacebookBot, FriendlyCrawler, Google-Extended, GPTBot, huggingface, ImagesiftBot, img2dataset, magpie-crawler, Meltwater, Neevabot, news-please, NewsNow, Nutch, omgili, omgilibot, panscient.com, Perplexity-ai, PerplexityBot, PetalBot, PiplBot, scoop.it, Scrapy, Seekr, SentiBot, SeznamBot, TurnitinBot, YouBot, ZumBot | |
| ziffdavis.com | partial | * |
Interpret the state carefully
“Allowed” means a selected group was observed without a blocking rule for the tested policy shape. “Partial” means at least one non-empty disallow path was observed. “No matching group” is silence, not an affirmative grant. None of these states authenticate the requester or establish legal permission.