Safe Official docs AI & LLM Bots

PerplexityBot

Q: What is the official user-agent string for PerplexityBot?

The official user-agent string for PerplexityBot is: PerplexityBot . This is the exact string you must use in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. User-agent matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive, but the string must be spelled correctly. You can verify that a request genuinely comes from PerplexityBot by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP - legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.

Q: Is PerplexityBot safe?

Yes. PerplexityBot is a documented bot: Perplexity AI publishes a page that names it and explains what it does. Note how it treats robots.txt (below) before relying on a Disallow rule.

Q: How do I block PerplexityBot in robots.txt?

Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file: User-agent: PerplexityBot Disallow: / This instructs PerplexityBot not to crawl any path on your site. The Disallow: / directive covers the entire domain including subfolders. To only block specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/ ). Note: robots.txt is publicly readable - any bot or human can inspect it at yourdomain.com/robots.txt .

Q: How do I verify if PerplexityBot is crawling my site?

Search your web server access logs for the string PerplexityBot (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "PerplexityBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log ). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For PerplexityBot specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).

Operated by Perplexity AI

Scout's quick take

PerplexityBot fetches pages so Perplexity AI's AI search can answer and cite them. Block it and you can drop out of those answers, so most sites keep it allowed. Heads up: Perplexity AI says robots.txt may not apply to it, so use a firewall rule if you need it stopped.

# Block only if you really mean to
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /

Check which AI crawlers get in Build a full robots.txt

Quick Facts

User-Agent:: PerplexityBot
Category:: AI & LLM Bots
Operator:: Perplexity AI
Safety:: Safe
Blocking Impact:: Low - No SEO ranking impact
SEO Impact Score:: 2/10
Official docs:: docs.perplexity.ai

Confirmed by the operator

Perplexity AI names PerplexityBot on its own documentation page, linked above. The token, purpose and robots.txt behaviour on this profile come from that page, re-checked on October 19, 2026.

What is PerplexityBot?

PerplexityBot is Perplexity's search crawler. Perplexity says it is "designed to surface and link websites in search results".

Perplexity states PerplexityBot "is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models". It identifies itself with the token PerplexityBot. Perplexity AI documents it at docs.perplexity.ai.

What happens if you block PerplexityBot?

Blocking it removes your pages from Perplexity search results and citations. No effect on Google or Bing.

Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value.

PerplexityBot and your AI citations

PerplexityBot is the crawler Perplexity AI uses to build the index behind its cited answers, so allowing it is what makes your pages eligible to be cited by Perplexity. Its token is PerplexityBot; on-demand fetches for a user use Perplexity-User instead. Perplexity says the bot respects robots.txt, though Cloudflare published evidence in August 2025 of undeclared Perplexity crawling, so do not rely on robots.txt alone for a hard block. To see whether it visits you, read how do I monitor AI bot traffic to my website?

How to block PerplexityBot with robots.txt

<code>User-agent: PerplexityBot</code> - Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.

Block completely (robots.txt)

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /

Allow all (robots.txt)

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

Block private only (robots.txt)

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /admin/
Allow: /

Nginx server block

# Nginx: Hard-block PerplexityBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "PerplexityBot") {
    return 403 "Bot blocked";
}

Apache .htaccess

# Apache: Hard-block PerplexityBot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "PerplexityBot" bad_bot
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot

Meta robots tag

X-Robots-Tag header

X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Is PerplexityBot safe to allow?

Yes. PerplexityBot is a documented bot: Perplexity AI publishes a page that names it and explains what it does. Note how it treats robots.txt (below) before relying on a Disallow rule.

Verify by reverse-DNS lookup: legitimate PerplexityBot requests resolve to perplexity-ai's domain.

What does PerplexityBot do?

From Perplexity AI's own documentation.

PerplexityBot is Perplexity's search crawler.
Not used to train AI models, according to the operator
Blocking it removes your pages from Perplexity search results and citations. No effect on Google or Bing.

PerplexityBot in context

PerplexityBot is a retrieval crawler that feeds AI search answers operated by Perplexity AI. In plain terms, it collects pages both for training and for search or answers. Our database files it under AI and LLM crawlers and ranks it Tier 1, the small set whose absence you would notice in AI answers or search results. 14 of the 104 AI and LLM crawlers in our database share this tier.

Its safety rating is safe and its blocking impact is low. So the decision about PerplexityBot rests on what you want from Perplexity AI, not on its behaviour. How we rate safety and impact.

How site owners treat PerplexityBot

In our own study of robots.txt files across the Tranco top 10,000 sites (fetched October 20, 2026, 5,583 valid files), 718 files (12.9%) name PerplexityBot in a User-agent line, and 609 (10.9%) block it from the homepage. 406 of those blocks come from a group written for this crawler by name, and 203 come from a broad User-agent: * rule that catches it by accident. Larger sites are stricter: 17% of the top 1,000 block it, against 11.6% of the middle band and 9.3% of the tail.

Does it follow robots.txt?

PerplexityBot's robots.txt behaviour is documented with exceptions or has been publicly questioned, so pair a PerplexityBot rule in robots.txt with a server-side rule if blocking matters to you.

Perplexity AI crawlers and close alternatives

PerplexityBot is one of 3 Perplexity AI crawlers in our database. A User-agent: PerplexityBot group controls PerplexityBot only; the other Perplexity AI tokens below need their own lines.

PerplexityBot: this crawler (Tier 1)
Perplexity-User: Perplexity User, fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it (Tier 2)
Perplexity-User-1.0: Perplexity User v1, fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it (Tier 2)

To give PerplexityBot the same answer as its siblings, stack User-agent: PerplexityBot with their lines above one set of rules; to treat PerplexityBot differently, give it its own group.

Other AI and LLM crawlers that do the same job (collects pages both for training and for search or answers) include Andibot from Andi, cohere-ai from Cohere, DeepSeekBot from DeepSeek, DoubaoBot from ByteDance, GrokBot from xAI, iAskBot from iAsk. Deciding about PerplexityBot is usually a decision about the whole group, so check how your file treats these too.

We first recorded PerplexityBot on March 17, 2026. Perplexity AI documents it on docs.perplexity.ai, and we recheck that page before each release.

Which rule PerplexityBot actually follows

PerplexityBot reads exactly one group in robots.txt, the most specific one that names PerplexityBot, and never combines rules across groups. This short file shows the trap:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /drafts/

Find the group. PerplexityBot looks for a group naming PerplexityBot. One exists, so it ignores User-agent: * completely.
Apply only that group. It is refused /drafts/ and nothing else.
The surprise. /private/ is open to PerplexityBot, because that rule lives in the * group it no longer reads. To keep it out of both, repeat Disallow: /private/ inside its own group.

Test yourself: does a rule under User-agent: * apply to PerplexityBot if the file also has a User-agent: PerplexityBot group?

No. Once a group names it, PerplexityBot reads only that group. Put every rule you want it to follow inside its own group.

Test yourself: will blocking PerplexityBot remove your pages from AI answers?

Often, yes. PerplexityBot is a retrieval crawler that feeds AI search answers, so pages it cannot fetch can drop out of the answers or results it supports.

Test yourself: is User-agent: perplexitybot the same as User-agent: PerplexityBot?

Yes. RFC 9309 makes user-agent matching case-insensitive. Paths are a different story: Disallow: /Blog/ does not block /blog/.

Should you allow PerplexityBot? Decide by situation

Recommended setting for PerplexityBot by type of site
If you are...	Recommended setting
You publish content and want AI answers to cite it	Allow it. PerplexityBot fetches pages for answers, so blocking it can remove you from them.
You license content and want to stop AI training	Blocking it does not stop training, because PerplexityBot is a retrieval crawler that feeds AI search answers. Block the operator's training crawler instead.
You run an online shop	Allow it on product and category pages, which are the pages shoppers ask assistants about.
Your server is under load from bots	Rate-limit before blocking. It is rated safe in our database.

Check PerplexityBot on your own site

Open /robots.txt on your domain and search for PerplexityBot. If it is not named, it follows User-agent: *.
List the Disallow lines in the group PerplexityBot follows and test your key URLs against them; the longest match wins, and Allow wins a tie.
Look beyond the file. A firewall or bot manager can refuse PerplexityBot even when robots.txt allows it, and that never shows in the file.
Run our crawlability checker for AI search to see how PerplexityBot and every other crawler we track are treated in one pass, including firewall refusals.

Common mistakes with PerplexityBot

The errors we see most often with PerplexityBot in the files and firewalls we test:

Blocking PerplexityBot while trying to stop AI training. Retrieval crawlers fetch pages so answers can cite them; blocking it can remove you from those answers without affecting training.
Letting a firewall or bot-fight mode refuse PerplexityBot while robots.txt allows it. The file looks right, but the crawler still gets a 403 or a challenge page.
Forgetting that once a User-agent: PerplexityBot group exists, PerplexityBot ignores every rule under User-agent: *.

All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check PerplexityBot from outside after every change.

Spotting PerplexityBot in your logs

robots.txt says what PerplexityBot may do; your access logs show what it actually did.

Count requests

On a server with standard Nginx or Apache logs, this counts matching requests per day (adjust the log path for your host):

grep -iE "PerplexityBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $4}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c

And this shows which paths it requested most, which is the quickest way to see whether your Disallow lines are being respected:

grep -iE "PerplexityBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Check the requests are genuine

Anyone can send the PerplexityBot user-agent, so confirm the source before acting on a match:

PerplexityBot: compare each address with the ranges at www.perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json. A request claiming to be PerplexityBot from outside them is not genuine.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the official user-agent string for PerplexityBot?

The official user-agent string for PerplexityBot is: PerplexityBot. This is the exact string you must use in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. User-agent matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive, but the string must be spelled correctly. You can verify that a request genuinely comes from PerplexityBot by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP - legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.

Is PerplexityBot safe?

Yes. PerplexityBot is a documented bot: Perplexity AI publishes a page that names it and explains what it does. Note how it treats robots.txt (below) before relying on a Disallow rule.

Will blocking PerplexityBot hurt my SEO?

Blocking it removes your pages from Perplexity search results and citations. No effect on Google or Bing.

How do I block PerplexityBot in robots.txt?

Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file:

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /

This instructs PerplexityBot not to crawl any path on your site. The Disallow: / directive covers the entire domain including subfolders. To only block specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/). Note: robots.txt is publicly readable - any bot or human can inspect it at yourdomain.com/robots.txt.

Does PerplexityBot respect robots.txt?

Perplexity says it follows robots.txt. Cloudflare published evidence in August 2025 of Perplexity also using undeclared crawlers that did not, and removed it from its Verified Bots list.

How do I verify if PerplexityBot is crawling my site?

Search your web server access logs for the string PerplexityBot (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "PerplexityBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For PerplexityBot specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).

What is the crawl frequency of PerplexityBot?

PerplexityBot crawls at a moderate rate. If you notice excessive traffic in your logs, you can add a Crawl-delay directive:

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Crawl-delay: 10

(10 second delay between requests).

Can I block PerplexityBot from specific pages only?

Yes. Instead of a global Disallow: / you can restrict PerplexityBot to specific paths:

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /staging/
Allow: /

This allows PerplexityBot everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching - Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.

Does blocking PerplexityBot prevent AI training on my content?

PerplexityBot is not used for AI training, according to Perplexity AI. Perplexity states PerplexityBot "is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models".

Is there an alternative to robots.txt to opt out of PerplexityBot?

The opt-out Perplexity AI documents is robots.txt. A firewall, CDN or server rule that returns 403 for PerplexityBot enforces it. Per-bot meta tags and llms.txt are not opt-out mechanisms any major operator documents.