What is ChatGPT-User? OpenAI's AI crawler
ChatGPT-User is the agent ChatGPT uses when a person's question or a Custom GPT leads it to visit a web page. OpenAI says it is not used to crawl the web automatically.
40 of the 389 major websites we measure block ChatGPT-User in robots.txt (10%), making it number 24 of the 30 AI crawlers we track for how often it is blocked. 83 of those sites name it directly in their robots.txt; the rest are covered by a wildcard rule.
Key facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Operator | OpenAI |
| Used for | ChatGPT |
| Type | On-demand fetch. Visits a page because someone asked a question. Several operators say robots.txt may not apply. |
| robots.txt token | ChatGPT-User |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking ChatGPT-User does
OpenAI says that because these visits are started by a user, robots.txt rules may not apply, and that this agent is not used to decide whether content appears in search.
How to allow or block ChatGPT-User
Add one of these groups to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. It is a stated preference that well-behaved crawlers read, not an enforcement mechanism.
User-agent: ChatGPT-User Disallow: /
User-agent: ChatGPT-User Allow: /
ChatGPT-User user agent string
The string OpenAI documents. Version numbers can change, so match on the name.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot
How to verify a request is really ChatGPT-User
Anyone can put a crawler's name in a user agent string, so the name alone proves nothing. OpenAI publishes the addresses ChatGPT-User uses: openai.com/chatgpt-user.json. Check a request's source address against that list.
How to whitelist ChatGPT-User in a firewall or CDN
robots.txt only states a preference. A firewall, CDN or bot protection service can still refuse the request, and the crawler then gets an error even though robots.txt allows it.
- Check that no group in your robots.txt blocks it, using the rule above.
- Add an allow rule in your firewall or CDN that matches the name and the published IP addresses. Keep the rule narrow, because anyone can copy a name.
- Check your server logs for a 200 response from ChatGPT-User afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why ChatGPT-User gets a 403 or 405 error
A 403 means the server refused the request, which usually points to a firewall or bot rule. A 405 means the server refused the request's method, so check any rule that only permits certain methods. A crawler that obeys robots.txt won't request a page it is told to avoid, so an error in your logs points to your server's configuration. To stop it deliberately at the server, this nginx rule returns a 403:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "ChatGPT-User") {
return 403;
}Which sites recently changed their rules for ChatGPT-User?
| Date first seen | Site | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 19 October 2026 | howtogeek.com | Stopped blocking |
| 19 October 2026 | makeuseof.com | Stopped blocking |
| 19 October 2026 | xda-developers.com | Stopped blocking |
| 14 September 2026 | corriere.it | Started blocking |
| 7 September 2026 | webmd.com | Stopped blocking |
See the full change log.
Who blocks ChatGPT-User, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| News publishers | 44 | 22 | 50% |
| Technology media | 25 | 6 | 24% |
| Reference and research | 25 | 4 | 16% |
| Social and media platforms | 28 | 4 | 14% |
| Health publishers | 16 | 1 | 6% |
| E-commerce and retail | 19 | 1 | 5% |
| Developer references | 34 | 1 | 3% |
| Finance and business media | 29 | 1 | 3% |
| AI companies | 28 | 0 | 0% |
| Government and institutions | 19 | 0 | 0% |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 23 | 0 | 0% |
| SaaS platforms | 54 | 0 | 0% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 26 | 0 | 0% |
| Travel | 19 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking ChatGPT-User
abcnews.go.com, aljazeera.com, amazon.com, asahi.com, bbc.co.uk, buzzfeednews.com, cnbc.com, cnn.com, corriere.it, dw.com, economist.com, france24.com, globeandmail.com, huffpost.com, imdb.com, irishtimes.com, lifehacker.com, mashable.com, myfitnesspal.com, nature.com, nbcnews.com, newsweek.com, nytimes.com, pcmag.com, pinterest.com, quora.com, reddit.com, sciencedirect.com, sciencemag.org, smh.com.au, spiegel.de, ssrn.com, techcrunch.com, telegraph.co.uk, theage.com.au, theverge.com, tutorialspoint.com, usatoday.com, vox.com, zdnet.com.
Sites that allow ChatGPT-User by name
academia.edu, airbnb.com, amplitude.com, barrons.com, bestbuy.com, bloomberg.com, cloudflare.com, css-tricks.com, deel.com, delta.com, descript.com, disneyplus.com, ebay.com, expedia.com, fastcompany.com, figma.com, flickr.com, frase.io, hackernoon.com, hulu.com, inc.com, instacart.com, investopedia.com, jasper.ai, kayak.com, klaviyo.com, marketwatch.com, monday.com, netflix.com, netlify.com, omio.com, redis.io, render.com, reuters.com, seranking.com, soundcloud.com, spyfu.com, theatlantic.com, theregister.com, thetimes.co.uk, and 6 more in the full dataset.
Other OpenAI crawlers
OAI-SearchBot (search indexing), GPTBot (model training).
See all 30 AI crawlers, the rule change log or the full study. Being reachable is only the first step: how AI search engines choose what to cite covers the rest.
Cite this data
You are welcome to quote or republish these figures. Please credit IndexHalo with a link to this page (CC BY 4.0). All our datasets are on the data page.
IndexHalo. "ChatGPT-User block rate across major websites." Measured 3 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/chatgpt-user/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/chatgpt-user/">ChatGPT-User block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>