PerplexityBot
PerplexityBot indexes your site for Perplexity's answer engine. Here is what it does, its user-agent string, and how to allow or block it.
What is PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot is operated by Perplexity AI. It indexes sites for Perplexity's answer engine, which cites and links back to sources. Perplexity states it “is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models” — its job is to surface and link websites in search results.
These bots index your site for AI-powered search engines that cite and link back to you. Blocking them makes you invisible exactly where a growing number of people now ask their questions.
The PerplexityBot user-agent string
This is the user-agent string Perplexity documents for PerplexityBot. You will see it in your server logs when the bot visits.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)
Perplexity publishes a verifiable IP list at https://www.perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json so you can confirm a request is genuinely PerplexityBot.
How do I block PerplexityBot in robots.txt?
Add one of these snippets to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. An explicit group for PerplexityBot overrides your User-agent: * rules for this bot.
Block PerplexityBot
Tells PerplexityBot it may not access any page on your site.
User-agent: PerplexityBot Disallow: /
Allow PerplexityBot
Explicitly allows PerplexityBot, even when a broad Disallow rule blocks other bots.
User-agent: PerplexityBot Allow: /
Does PerplexityBot respect robots.txt?
Documented as respecting robots.txt: Perplexity's docs recommend you “allow PerplexityBot in your site's robots.txt file.” Note the separate controversy below about Perplexity's crawling behavior.
Should you block PerplexityBot?
Think twice before blocking PerplexityBot. It does not train models — it indexes your site so Perplexity can cite and link to you. Blocking it removes you from those answers. One caveat: in August 2025 Cloudflare reported that Perplexity used undeclared, robots.txt-evading crawlers on tens of thousands of domains; Perplexity disputed this. That is reported behavior of undeclared bots, separate from PerplexityBot's documented policy.
Official documentation
The facts on this page come from Perplexity's bot documentation. Bot behavior changes — when in doubt, the operator's page is the source of truth:
https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/botsWhat does your robots.txt say about PerplexityBot?
Run your domain through our free checker to see whether PerplexityBot — and 13 other AI crawlers — may access your site right now.