Perplexity-User: Perplexity's Answer Crawler
What is Perplexity-User?
Perplexity-User fetches a page because a person asked Perplexity about it. Perplexity-User is separate from PerplexityBot, and Perplexity states this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt because a person requested the page.
Key facts
- Perplexity-User is operated by Perplexity, and its purpose is live fetch: fetches a page in real time because a person asked.
- The user agent for Perplexity-User is documented by Perplexity and contains the token Perplexity-User.
- The robots.txt token for Perplexity-User is Perplexity-User, and Perplexity states that rule may not apply, because a person starts the request.
- Perplexity-User can send a visitor to your site, and Perplexity-User attaches a linked citation when it uses your content.
Specification
| Operator | Perplexity |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Live fetchFetches a page in real time because a person asked. Traffic here tracks human interest, not a crawl schedule. |
| Agent kind | FetcherFetches on a person's request. Appears in your logs. Request volume follows human activity. |
| User agent | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user) |
| robots.txt token | Perplexity-User |
| robots.txt compliance | Operator states robots.txt may not apply (user initiated) |
| Verification | Published IP range filehttps://www.perplexity.com/perplexity-user.json |
| Sends referral traffic | Yes |
| Attaches a citation | Yes |
| Status | Active |
| Legacy Kymo category | ai_answer |
| Source | Operator documentationhttps://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots |
| Verified on |
What this looks like in your logs
203.0.113.42 - - [04/Aug/2026:09:14:07 +0000] "GET /pricing HTTP/1.1" 200 18432 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user)"
The part that identifies the request is the token Perplexity-User, inside the quoted user-agent field at the end of the line. Everything before it is the ordinary shape of a Common Log Format entry, and the address shown is a documentation address rather than one Perplexity uses.
What Perplexity-User does not do
Perplexity-User does not guarantee a visit, because a read only becomes a visit if a person clicks the citation that came out of it.
Perplexity-User does not crawl on a schedule, because it only requests a page when a person has already asked something that needs it.
Perplexity publishes no crawl frequency for Perplexity-User, so any schedule you read elsewhere is somebody's estimate rather than a documented figure.
How Kymo classifies it
Kymo files Perplexity-User under Perplexity as ai_answer, classified from the HTTP request on the server rather than from anything running in a browser.
A hit from Perplexity-User counts in the reads on the AI Traffic page. An answer crawl is the only kind made for one person's question, so it is the only kind counted beside the people AI sent you.
Seen on our own sites
| Last seen | 1 Nov 2026 |
|---|---|
| Days active, last 30 days | 20 |
| Requests, last 30 days | 105 |
Counted by Kymo on kymo.in and remotestack.in, the two sites we run, up to 2 Nov 2026. Two sites is a small sample. Treat these numbers as proof the bot is active now.
Allow it or block it
Blocking this prevents Perplexity from reading your page during a live user request. Perplexity documents that because a user requested the fetch, this agent generally ignores robots.txt, so an edge rule is needed to enforce a block. The current token is Perplexity-User; PerplexityBot-User appears in some third-party lists and is not correct.
| Allow it if | Block it if |
|---|---|
| You want Perplexity to read your live page when a person asks about you, which is the crawl most likely to send a real visitor. | You do not want your page read during a live question. Check the compliance row first: a fetcher started by a person may need an edge rule rather than a robots.txt rule. |
robots.txt directives
Both blocks below address Perplexity-User only. Rules for one token never apply to another, even from the same operator.
Allow Perplexity-User
User-agent: Perplexity-User Allow: /
Block Perplexity-User
User-agent: Perplexity-User Disallow: /
Questions
How do I know a request claiming to be Perplexity-User is genuine?
Perplexity publishes the IP ranges Perplexity-User uses at https://www.perplexity.com/perplexity-user.json. Check the requesting address against that file. A user-agent string alone proves nothing, because anyone can send one.
Does blocking Perplexity-User also block PerplexityBot?
No. Perplexity-User and PerplexityBot are separate tokens, and Perplexity treats each one on its own. A rule naming Perplexity-User leaves PerplexityBot free to carry on indexing your pages for Perplexity answers. To stop that as well, name PerplexityBot in a rule of its own.
Will I see Perplexity-User in Google Analytics?
No. Google Analytics runs a JavaScript tag in a visitor's browser, and Perplexity-User reads your HTML and leaves without running any script. Server-side logging is the only way to record it.
Does Perplexity-User send traffic back to my site?
Yes. Perplexity-User builds an index that Perplexity cites its sources from, and a citation there is a link a person can click. A crawl is still not a visit, so expect the read count to run far ahead of the click count.
Related crawlers
All AI crawlers and control tokens
See this bot in your own logs
Perplexity-User arrives because a person just asked Perplexity something, and a browser tag never runs in time to record the moment.
Kymo reads the HTTP request on your server, so a crawler that never runs JavaScript is still recorded. You see which bots reached the site, which pages they took and how often, next to your human traffic.
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