PerplexityBot: Perplexity's Search Crawler
What is PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot indexes content so Perplexity can cite it in answers. Perplexity does not build foundation models, so this is retrieval rather than training. PerplexityBot is separate from Perplexity-User, and its robots.txt compliance was disputed by third parties in 2025 despite Perplexity's own statement.
Key facts
- PerplexityBot is operated by Perplexity, and its purpose is search index: builds the index an AI product cites from.
- The user agent for PerplexityBot is documented by Perplexity and contains the token PerplexityBot.
- The robots.txt token for PerplexityBot is PerplexityBot, and Perplexity states that PerplexityBot respects it, which third parties have disputed.
- PerplexityBot can send a visitor to your site, and PerplexityBot attaches a linked citation when it uses your content.
Specification
| Operator | Perplexity |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Search indexBuilds the index an AI product cites from. Blocking it removes you from that product's answers. This is the expensive block, and the one most often made by accident. |
| Agent kind | CrawlerAutonomous crawler. Appears in your logs under its own user-agent. |
| User agent | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot) |
| robots.txt token | PerplexityBot |
| robots.txt compliance | Operator claims compliance, disputed by third parties |
| Verification | Published IP range filehttps://www.perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json |
| Sends referral traffic | Yes |
| Attaches a citation | Yes |
| Status | Active |
| Legacy Kymo category | indexing |
| 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; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)"
The part that identifies the request is the token PerplexityBot, 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 PerplexityBot does not do
PerplexityBot does not guarantee a visit, because a read only becomes a visit if a person clicks the citation that came out of it.
PerplexityBot does not train a model on what it reads, so blocking it changes what Perplexity can answer and not what Perplexity learns.
Perplexity publishes no crawl frequency for PerplexityBot, so any schedule you read elsewhere is somebody's estimate rather than a documented figure.
How Kymo classifies it
Kymo files PerplexityBot under Perplexity as indexing, classified from the HTTP request on the server rather than from anything running in a browser.
A hit from PerplexityBot appears on the Crawlers dashboard and is deliberately left out of the AI Visibility numbers. An index sweep produces no click to miss, so counting it there would inflate the read number and break its relationship to the visitor number beside it.
Seen on our own sites
| Last seen | 15 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Days active, last 30 days | 31 |
| Requests, last 30 days | 8,531 |
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 PerplexityBot removes you from Perplexity citations, which is one of the more reliable AI referral sources. Compliance note: Cloudflare published evidence in August 2025 that Perplexity used undeclared crawlers which bypassed robots.txt. State this as the disputed finding it is, and attribute it.
| Allow it if | Block it if |
|---|---|
| You want to appear in Perplexity answers, because this crawler builds the index those answers cite. | You accept disappearing from Perplexity answers. This is the most expensive block on this page, and it is the one made most often by accident. |
robots.txt directives
Both blocks below address PerplexityBot only. Rules for one token never apply to another, even from the same operator.
Allow PerplexityBot
User-agent: PerplexityBot Allow: /
Block PerplexityBot
User-agent: PerplexityBot Disallow: /
Questions
How do I know a request claiming to be PerplexityBot is genuine?
Perplexity publishes the IP ranges PerplexityBot uses at https://www.perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json. Check the requesting address against that file. A user-agent string alone proves nothing, because anyone can send one.
Does blocking PerplexityBot also block Perplexity-User?
No. PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User are separate tokens, and Perplexity treats each one on its own. A rule naming PerplexityBot leaves Perplexity-User free to carry on fetching your pages when a person asks Perplexity a question. To stop that as well, name Perplexity-User in a rule of its own.
Will I see PerplexityBot in Google Analytics?
No. Google Analytics runs a JavaScript tag in a visitor's browser, and PerplexityBot reads your HTML and leaves without running any script. Server-side logging is the only way to record it.
Does PerplexityBot send traffic back to my site?
Yes. PerplexityBot 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
PerplexityBot decides whether you appear in Perplexity answers, and a browser tag cannot tell you whether it ever came.
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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