AI crawlers / Perplexity-User
Perplexity · Perplexity (user-initiated) · User-initiated fetcher
Perplexity's user-initiated fetcher. It visits a page when a person asks Perplexity about it, and generally disregards robots.txt because it acts on a user request.
At a glance
Usually allowed, it fetches only when a person asks the assistant about your page.
Perplexity-User fetches pages when users ask Perplexity questions, so it can provide accurate answers and include links in responses.
Perplexity documents that this fetcher generally disregards robots.txt rules, because it acts on a direct user request rather than as a background crawler.
Like Perplexity's other agent, it does not collect training data, it serves user-facing answers only.
Perplexity-User acts on a direct user request and, per Perplexity, generally does not treat robots.txt as binding the way a background crawler does. The rules below express your intent, but a user-initiated fetch may still occur when a person explicitly points the assistant at your page.
Allow Perplexity-User:
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /Block Perplexity-User:
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Disallow: /Check what your live site actually allows with the Robots.txt + AI-Bot Tester.
Verified on 2026-09-04 against Perplexity, Crawlers & user agents. Confidence: documented, stated in the vendor’s own documentation.
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