ClaudeBot vs PerplexityBot: Which AI Crawler Should You Allow or Block?
Complete side-by-side comparison of ClaudeBot (Anthropic) and PerplexityBot (Perplexity AI): user-agent strings, safety ratings, SEO impact, and copy-paste blocking rules. Updated August 2026.
Quick Verdict
Both ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot carry the same safety rating (Safe). Your decision should come down to whether you want your content used by Anthropic versus Perplexity AI, and whether each bot's purpose (training, search, or user requests) aligns with your content strategy.
| Attribute | ClaudeBot | PerplexityBot |
|---|---|---|
| Operator | Anthropic | Perplexity AI |
| User-agent string | ClaudeBot |
PerplexityBot |
| Category | AI & LLM Bots | AI & LLM Bots |
| Safety rating | Safe | Safe |
| SEO impact if blocked | Low - No SEO ranking impact | Low - No SEO ranking impact |
| Recommendation | Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value. | Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value. |
| Official docs | ClaudeBot docs | PerplexityBot docs |
What is ClaudeBot?
The main crawler for Anthropic. It scrapes the web to build the training dataset for the Claude family of AI models.
Full ClaudeBot guideWhat is PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot is the web crawler for Perplexity AI. It gathers real-time information to answer user queries with citations.
Full PerplexityBot guideHow to block each bot
Block ClaudeBot in robots.txt
User-agent: ClaudeBot Disallow: /
Block PerplexityBot in robots.txt
User-agent: PerplexityBot 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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