ChatGPT-User
OpenAI's agent for visiting a page when someone asks ChatGPT or a custom GPT a question. OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to these user-initiated requests.
| Operator | OpenAI |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Browsing — ChatGPT, custom GPTs and GPT Actions |
| robots.txt token | ChatGPT-User |
| User-Agent | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot |
| Obeys robots.txt | Not always: may ignore it when a user triggers the visit (per the publisher) |
| Official IP ranges | https://openai.com/chatgpt-user.json — 234 ranges, list dated 2026-10-20 |
| Reverse DNS | Not documented |
| Official documentation | https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots |
Live activity of ChatGPT-User
No visit from ChatGPT-User recorded on iabig.com over the last 30 days.
Last updated: 2026-10-25 12:07:01 UTC. See the Observatory
What ChatGPT-User does
ChatGPT-User is not an automatic crawler. It is used for certain user actions in ChatGPT and custom GPTs: when someone asks a question, ChatGPT may visit a web page with this agent. It is also used when users interact with external applications through GPT Actions.
What OpenAI states:
- Because these actions are initiated by a user, robots.txt rules may not apply.
- ChatGPT-User is not used to crawl the web automatically.
- It is not used to decide whether content can appear in search. Search visibility and automatic crawling are managed through
OAI-SearchBot.
ChatGPT-User requests therefore reflect pages fetched to answer a specific user, not a systematic crawl of your site. Disallowing the agent in robots.txt does not remove a site from ChatGPT search, and there is no guarantee the rule will be honored.
Its IP ranges are published in a JSON file separate from the GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot lists. This file is much longer and is regenerated often (most recently on 20 October 2026 at the time of checking), so fetch it on a schedule instead of copying it once. The full user-agent string is published; no reverse DNS hostname is documented.
Block or allow ChatGPT-User
A robots.txt rule offers no guarantee, since OpenAI says it may not apply. Where it is honored, ChatGPT can no longer read your pages on a user's behalf; ChatGPT search inclusion is unaffected.
To block it, add this to your robots.txt:
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /To allow it explicitly (copy any private rules you have):
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /A group naming ChatGPT-User replaces the User-agent: * group for it. Build a complete robots.txt with the generator and check it with the tester.
Verify a ChatGPT-User visit
Anyone can write “ChatGPT-User” in a User-Agent. Paste the IP address and User-Agent from your logs into the IP verifier to know whether the visit is genuine.
Other OpenAI crawlers
- GPTBot — Training
- OAI-SearchBot — Search