ChatGPT-User user agent, robots.txt & how to verify

Operator	OpenAI
Purpose	Fetching pages when a ChatGPT user asks for it
robots.txt token	`ChatGPT-User`
Respects robots.txt	OpenAI documents that robots.txt may not apply to user-initiated requests; check current documentation.
If you block it	ChatGPT cannot open your page when a user pastes your link or asks about it.

User-agent string

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot

Version numbers inside user-agents change over time. Match on the token (ChatGPT-User), never on the full string.

robots.txt examples

Block ChatGPT-User

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /

Allow ChatGPT-User, block a folder

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /

A group for a specific crawler replaces the User-agent: * group for that crawler — rules are not combined. Repeat any rules from * that should still apply.

How to verify ChatGPT-User

OpenAI publishes the IP ranges used by ChatGPT-User.

The user-agent alone proves nothing — it is the first thing scrapers copy. See how to verify crawlers.

Is ChatGPT-User blocked on your site?

Your robots.txt may allow ChatGPT-User while your CDN or firewall refuses it. Test the real response with the AI crawler checker.

Official documentation: platform.openai.com