01 · Operator
Who operates PerplexityBot
- Company
- Perplexity
- Type
- AI search crawler
- Official docs
- docs.perplexity.ai
02 · Behavior
What PerplexityBot does
PerplexityBot crawls pages automatically to build the index behind Perplexity's answers. Perplexity states it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models. It is not triggered by individual users; user-requested fetches use Perplexity-User.
03 · Impact
Why PerplexityBot matters for your site
If you allow it
- Your pages can be cited and linked in Perplexity answers
- Potential referral traffic
- Perplexity says it is not used for model training
If you block it
- Removes your site from Perplexity's index
- Cloudflare reported in 2025 that Perplexity used undeclared crawlers on sites that blocked it
04 · Allow
How to allow PerplexityBot
robots.txt
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "PerplexityBot")
Action: Skip › All Super Bot Fight Mode rules
# Also check Security › Bots: "Block AI bots" can block it regardless of robots.txt.WordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /nginx
# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "PerplexityBot") { return 403; }Apache
# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PerplexityBot [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]05 · Block
How to block PerplexityBot
PerplexityBot does not always follow robots.txt. Add a server or CDN rule if you need a hard block.
robots.txt
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "PerplexityBot")
Action: BlockWordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /nginx
# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "PerplexityBot") {
return 403;
}Apache
# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PerplexityBot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>06 · User agents
User agents we see for PerplexityBot
The user agent published by the operator:
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)07 · Verification
Is it really PerplexityBot?
Anyone can copy a user agent. Real PerplexityBot requests come from the IP ranges published at perplexity.ai/perplexitybot.json.
FAQ
Questions about PerplexityBot
Is PerplexityBot used to train AI models?
Perplexity states that PerplexityBot is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models; it surfaces and links websites in search results.
Does Perplexity respect robots.txt?
Perplexity recommends controlling PerplexityBot via robots.txt, but in August 2025 Cloudflare reported Perplexity using undeclared crawlers on sites that disallowed its bots.
How do I verify PerplexityBot traffic?
Check the source IP against the list Perplexity publishes at perplexity.ai/perplexitybot.json.
Last reviewed Oct 6, 2026