Learn · AI crawlers
What is ChatGPT-User?
By Cloute · Published October 1, 2026
The short answer
ChatGPT-User is the user agent OpenAI uses when ChatGPT or a custom GPT visits a web page as part of answering a user's request. It is not an automatic crawler: each visit is ChatGPT opening a page while it works on someone's question.
ChatGPT-User visits in Cloute's server logs of local business pages in 2026
visits from OpenAI's three crawlers combined
What does ChatGPT-User do?
OpenAI says ChatGPT-User is "used for certain user actions in ChatGPT and Custom GPTs" and "is not used for crawling the web in an automatic fashion." When a person's question leads ChatGPT to a page, the request arrives with this user agent.
That makes it the closest thing in a server log to a customer reading your page through ChatGPT. A ChatGPT-User visit to a business's services or hours page usually means someone just asked a question that page answers.
Does ChatGPT-User follow robots.txt?
OpenAI says: "Because these actions are initiated by a user, robots.txt rules may not apply." It also says ChatGPT-User "is not used to determine whether content may appear in Search." Inclusion in ChatGPT search is controlled through OAI-SearchBot.
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
- robots.txt token: ChatGPT-User
- IP ranges: published by OpenAI at openai.com/chatgpt-user.json.
Why does ChatGPT-User matter to a local business?
When an AI engine reads a business's own page while answering, it names that business far more often. Across 64,441 AI answers about local businesses, the business was named 83.7% of the time when the engine had read one of its own pages and 16.2% when it had not. ChatGPT-User visits are one of the few signs a business can see of that reading happening.
Because ChatGPT-User fetches a page at the moment of the question, the page has to work for a reader that does not run JavaScript. Text that only appears after scripts load is not there for it. Cloute found its own website was invisible to AI crawlers for this reason in 2026, and fixed it by sending the content in the HTML.
Read next
Research: 80,000+ AI crawler visits to local business websites What is GPTBot? What is OAI-SearchBot? AI crawlers: the complete list for 2026 Should a local business block AI crawlers?Questions people ask
Is ChatGPT-User a crawler?
Not in the usual sense. OpenAI says it is not used for automatic crawling. It visits pages because a ChatGPT user's request led there.
Can I block ChatGPT-User?
You can add a robots.txt rule, but OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to user-initiated actions. Blocking it would also stop ChatGPT reading your page for a customer who asked.
How often does ChatGPT-User visit local business websites?
It made 7,582 visits in Cloute's server logs of local business pages in 2026. Each one was ChatGPT opening a page while working on someone's request.
About Cloute. Cloute is an AI visibility company for local businesses. It measures how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews recommend a business against its local competitors, and works every month to move it to the top.