Bingbot vs GPTBot: Which AI Crawler Should You Allow or Block?
Complete side-by-side comparison of Bingbot (Microsoft) and GPTBot (OpenAI): user-agent strings, safety ratings, SEO impact, and copy-paste blocking rules. Updated August 2026.
Quick Verdict
Both Bingbot and GPTBot carry the same safety rating (Safe). Your decision should come down to whether you want your content used by Microsoft versus OpenAI, and whether each bot's purpose (training, search, or user requests) aligns with your content strategy.
| Attribute | Bingbot | GPTBot |
|---|---|---|
| Operator | Microsoft | OpenAI |
| User-agent string | bingbot |
GPTBot |
| Category | Search Engines | AI & LLM Bots |
| Safety rating | Safe | Safe |
| SEO impact if blocked | Critical - Blocking removes you from search results | Low - No SEO ranking impact |
| Recommendation | Never block - it will remove your site from major search results. | Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value. |
| Official docs | Bingbot docs | GPTBot docs |
What is Bingbot?
Bingbot is the standard web crawler for Microsoft's Bing search engine. It allows your website to appear in Bing search results and powers search experiences across the Microsoft ecosystem.
Full Bingbot guideWhat is GPTBot?
OpenAI's web crawler. Used to collect training data for GPT models. Blocking it prevents your content from being used to train ChatGPT but does not affect search visibility.
Full GPTBot guideHow to block each bot
Block Bingbot in robots.txt
User-agent: bingbot Disallow: /
Block GPTBot in robots.txt
User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: /
Want to block or allow many bots at once? Use our free robots.txt generator with 196+ bot presets, then verify with the AI crawler checker.
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