What is ChatGPT-User?
ChatGPT-User is OpenAI's on-demand AI fetcher. Fetches your page live when a ChatGPT user asks about you in a conversation.
What does ChatGPT-User do with your content?
Fetches your page live when a ChatGPT user asks about you in a conversation. Like most AI crawlers, ChatGPT-User reads your pages as plain HTML — it does not run JavaScript — so content that only appears after scripts execute is invisible to it.
Should you block ChatGPT-User?
ChatGPT-User only visits when a person in ChatGPT asks it to open or read your page, so blocking it mostly stops customers who are already asking about you. OpenAI also notes that robots.txt rules may not apply to these user-initiated fetches; if you really need it out, use a firewall rule. For most businesses, leave it allowed.
How do you allow or block ChatGPT-User in robots.txt?
Add one of these snippets to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. The first explicitly allows ChatGPT-User everywhere; the second blocks it completely.
# Allow ChatGPT-User
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /
# Block ChatGPT-User
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /How do you recognise ChatGPT-User in your server logs?
Search your access logs for the ChatGPT-User token rather than the whole line. The full user-agent string OpenAI publishes is shown below.
Anyone can copy a user-agent string, so check the request's IP address against the list OpenAI publishes for ChatGPT-User.
OpenAI documents that ChatGPT-User fetches pages because a user asked, and that robots.txt rules may not apply to it the way they do to crawlers; a firewall rule is the reliable way to block it.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/botOpenAI's documentation for ChatGPT-User · OpenAI's published IP ranges
Is robots.txt enough?
Not always. CDNs and firewalls (Cloudflare in particular) can block crawlers at the network level regardless of what robots.txt says — Cloudflare blocks AI crawlers by default for many accounts. If you want ChatGPT-User to reach your site, check your CDN's bot settings too. SeeGeo's free audit checks both.
How do I check whether ChatGPT-User can read my site right now?
Two checks, both needed: read your robots.txt for a group naming ChatGPT-User (or the * group it falls back to), then request your homepage with ChatGPT-User's user agent and confirm you get a 200 with your real HTML rather than a 403 or a challenge page. SeeGeo's free crawler check runs both in a few seconds.
How does ChatGPT-User compare to similar crawlers?
ChatGPT-User is one of 17 crawlers the SeeGeo audit checks individually. The closest comparisons:
| Crawler | Operator | Role | Runs JavaScript? |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT-User | OpenAI | on-demand AI fetcher | No |
| GPTBot | OpenAI | AI training crawler | No |
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI | AI search index crawler | No |
| Claude-User | Anthropic | on-demand AI fetcher | No |
| Perplexity-User | Perplexity | on-demand AI fetcher | No |
Why does crawler access matter? The numbers
Crawler access is where AI visibility starts or ends: a blocked crawler can't read you, and an AI that can't read you can't recommend you.
- Visitors arriving from AI assistants convert at roughly 4.4x the rate of traditional organic search on average (Semrush, cross-industry, 2026).
- AI-assistant referrals are still only about 1% of total web traffic — small, but the fastest-growing acquisition channel measured (multiple 2026 studies).
- Adobe Digital Insights (Q1 2026) measured AI-assistant visitors converting 42% better than non-AI traffic — a full reversal from the year before.
- Cloudflare blocks AI crawlers by default for many accounts, so sites are often invisible to AI without anyone having decided to be.
- Content edits alone — statistics, citations, quotable structure — can raise AI visibility on the order of 30–40% (Princeton GEO study, KDD 2024).
Frequently asked questions
What is ChatGPT-User?
ChatGPT-User is OpenAI's on-demand AI fetcher. Fetches your page live when a ChatGPT user asks about you in a conversation.
Should I block ChatGPT-User?
ChatGPT-User only visits when a person in ChatGPT asks it to open or read your page, so blocking it mostly stops customers who are already asking about you. OpenAI also notes that robots.txt rules may not apply to these user-initiated fetches; if you really need it out, use a firewall rule.
Does ChatGPT-User run JavaScript?
No. ChatGPT-User, like most AI crawlers, reads raw HTML without executing JavaScript. If your content only renders client-side, it is effectively invisible to it.
Can ChatGPT-User read my website?
Only if two things are true: your robots.txt does not disallow ChatGPT-User, and your server or CDN actually serves the page when ChatGPT-User asks. Firewalls can block it regardless of robots.txt, so the reliable way to know is to fetch your homepage as ChatGPT-User — the free check on see-geo.com/ai-crawler-check does exactly that.
What is ChatGPT-User's user agent?
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot. Anyone can copy a user-agent string, so check the request's IP address against the list OpenAI publishes for ChatGPT-User.