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 on the AI Visibility page, which is the only page that counts crawls at all. An answer crawl is the only kind a person can click through from, so it is the only kind that belongs beside a visitor number.
Seen on our own sites
| Last seen | 14 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Days active, last 30 days | 6 |
| Requests, last 30 days | 29 |
Counted by Kymo on kymo.in and remotestack.in, the two sites we run, up to 15 Sep 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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