AI crawlers
ChatGPT-User
ChatGPT-User is the user agent ChatGPT and Custom GPTs use when they visit a web page because a person asked a question.
In plain words
It doesn’t crawl the web automatically. It visits a page only as part of an action a user started.
Because a user started the request, OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply.
Example
Someone pastes a link to your product page into ChatGPT and asks for a summary. ChatGPT may then fetch that page as ChatGPT-User.
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /members/Why it matters for AI search
You can’t use ChatGPT-User to control ChatGPT search. OpenAI says to use OAI-SearchBot for that.
Visits from ChatGPT-User in your server logs show that people are reading your pages through ChatGPT.
What you can do
- Don’t rely on robots.txt to keep private pages away from it; put them behind a login.
- Use OAI-SearchBot rules to manage ChatGPT search.
- Check visits against OpenAI’s published IP list before you trust the user agent.
Try it: Free robots.txt generator
Often confused with
- OAI-SearchBot
- OAI-SearchBot crawls automatically for search. ChatGPT-User only visits when a person asks.
- GPTBot
- GPTBot collects training data. ChatGPT-User fetches a page for one user’s request.
Quick facts
- Run by
- OpenAI
- robots.txt name
- ChatGPT-User
- Official IP list
- chatgpt-user.json
Sources
Facts and sources last checked on 19 October 2026.
Related terms
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