What is ChatGPT-User?
ChatGPT-User is the agent OpenAI uses when ChatGPT or a custom GPT visits a web page because of something a user asked. When a ChatGPT user's request needs a web page, ChatGPT-User is what fetches it. It is not a crawler and not the bot that decides whether you appear in ChatGPT search, and robots.txt may not apply to it.
What does ChatGPT-User do?
OpenAI says it uses ChatGPT-User for certain user actions in ChatGPT and Custom GPTs: when someone asks ChatGPT or a Custom GPT something and it visits a web page, or uses a GPT Action to reach an outside app. OpenAI states it is not used for crawling the web in an automatic fashion (OpenAI's bot docs, read Oct 15, 2026).
OpenAI also says ChatGPT-User is not used to determine whether content may appear in Search, and points site owners to OAI-SearchBot for search opt-outs and automatic crawling.
Does robots.txt apply to ChatGPT-User?
Not reliably. Because these actions are started by a user, OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply. A Disallow for ChatGPT-User is a request OpenAI does not promise to honor for user-initiated fetches.
If a page must not be read, robots.txt was never the tool: use authentication. If you want ChatGPT to be able to read it for users, make sure your CDN or firewall does not block the agent, because that block works whether or not robots.txt applies.
How do you recognize and verify ChatGPT-User?
OpenAI publishes its full user-agent string and an IP list at openai.com/chatgpt-user.json. Match on the ChatGPT-User token in your logs, then confirm the source IP is on OpenAI's list, because a user-agent string can be typed by anyone.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/botWhat does ChatGPT-User mean for citations, in a real example?
It is how ChatGPT reads a page in the moment, so a blocked page cannot be quoted then. In the public Tesla example (Oct 4, 2026), ChatGPT cited tesla.com 12 times in 93 citations across 25 buyer questions, about 13%, far more than the other three engines.
That share depends on ChatGPT reaching the pages it chooses, through its search crawler and its user agent alike. Blocking either quietly removes you from that pool.
How do you see ChatGPT-User on your site?
Proofsource counts AI crawler and fetcher requests from your Cloudflare zone or access logs every day, ChatGPT-User included, and checks each one against the vendor's published IP ranges so an impostor is labeled, not mixed in. See AI Traffic and the free AI crawler checker.
Common questions about ChatGPT-User
Is ChatGPT-User the same as GPTBot?
No. GPTBot collects content that may be used for training. ChatGPT-User fetches a page because a user's request needs it, and is not used for automatic crawling.
Should I block ChatGPT-User?
Usually not, if you want ChatGPT to be able to read your pages for people asking about you. OpenAI also says robots.txt may not apply to it.
Does allowing ChatGPT-User get me into ChatGPT search?
No. OpenAI says search appearance is managed through OAI-SearchBot. Allow both if you want to be found and read.
Why does ChatGPT-User visit pages I never linked?
A user asked ChatGPT something that led it to your page, often through a search or a link the user pasted.
Related terms
- OAI-SearchBot
OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler for surfacing websites in ChatGPT's search features, and sites that opt out of it are not shown in ChatGPT search answers.
- GPTBot
GPTBot is OpenAI's web crawler for collecting content that may be used to train OpenAI's generative AI foundation models.
- robots.txt
robots.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that tells crawlers which paths they may fetch, under the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309).
- AI referral traffic
AI referral traffic is the visits that reach your website from links in AI assistants' answers, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Copilot.
Worked example: Tesla, public AI answers, Oct 4, 2026: Proofsource's first scan of Tesla, 25 buyer questions and 5 brand questions, one answer per question on each of four engines. A small sample from one brand, shown as an example, not a benchmark.
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