ChatGPT-User User Agent: What It Is & How to Block It

01 · Operator

Who operates ChatGPT-User

Company: OpenAI
Type: AI assistant fetcher
Official docs: developers.openai.com

02 · Behavior

What ChatGPT-User does

ChatGPT-User fetches individual pages when a user's question in ChatGPT or a Custom GPT requires it. OpenAI states it is not used to crawl the web automatically. Because visits are initiated by users, OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply.

03 · Impact

Why ChatGPT-User matters for your site

If you allow it

ChatGPT can read and cite your page when users ask about it
Each request reflects real user demand
Not an automatic crawler

If you block it

You do not want ChatGPT to fetch your pages on demand
robots.txt may not apply, so blocking may require server or firewall rules

04 · Allow

How to allow ChatGPT-User

robots.txt

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "ChatGPT-User")
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: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

nginx

# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "ChatGPT\-User") { return 403; }

Apache

# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ChatGPT\-User [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

05 · Block

How to block ChatGPT-User

ChatGPT-User does not always follow robots.txt. Add a server or CDN rule if you need a hard block.

robots.txt

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "ChatGPT-User")
Action:     Block

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: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /

nginx

# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "ChatGPT\-User") {
    return 403;
}

Apache

# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ChatGPT\-User [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>

06 · User agents

User agents we see for ChatGPT-User

The user agent published by the operator:

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot

Other OpenAI bots

07 · Verification

Is it really ChatGPT-User?

Anyone can copy a user agent. Real ChatGPT-User requests come from the IP ranges published at openai.com/chatgpt-user.json.

FAQ

Questions about ChatGPT-User

Does ChatGPT-User follow robots.txt?

OpenAI says that because these actions are initiated by a user, robots.txt rules may not apply.

Is ChatGPT-User a web crawler?

No. OpenAI states it is not used for crawling the web automatically; it visits pages when a ChatGPT or Custom GPT user's request needs them.

How do I verify ChatGPT-User traffic?

Compare the source IP with the ranges OpenAI publishes at openai.com/chatgpt-user.json.

ChatGPT-User is OpenAI’s AI assistant fetcher