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OpenAILive fetcher

ChatGPT-User

ChatGPT-User is a user-triggered OpenAI fetcher for ChatGPT and Custom GPT actions.

Reads a page when someone asks ChatGPT about it.

Is ChatGPT-User allowed on your site?3 OpenAI bots

Reads your live robots.txt and applies the same rules these crawlers use. Nothing is stored.

robots.txt token
ChatGPT-User
Follows robots.txt
Not always
How to verify it
Published IP ranges
Last checked
18 August 2026

Should you block ChatGPT-User?

Usually not. It reads a page only when a person asks ChatGPT about it, so blocking it hides your page from someone already looking for it.

What blocking each OpenAI bot does
OpenAI botJobIf you block it
GPTBotTrainingDisallowing GPTBot expresses an opt-out for the potential training use covered by that crawler. ChatGPT search uses the separate OAI-SearchBot control.
OAI-SearchBotSearchDisallowing OAI-SearchBot can reduce search discovery and citation eligibility. Allowing it does not guarantee indexing, ranking, or citation.
ChatGPT AgentUser fetchA verified request represents task automation on a user’s behalf, not background search indexing or training crawling.
ChatGPT-UserThis pageUser fetchA matching request is consistent with a user-triggered fetch, not broad search indexing or training. It does not reveal the conversation or prove citation.
OAI-AdsBotOtherBlocking it can prevent an ad landing page from being reviewed or matched to relevant ad opportunities. It does not affect organic ChatGPT search or model training.

From OpenAI’s documentationOpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to ChatGPT-User, because a person starts each request.

About robots.txtOpenAI documents this as user initiated, so robots.txt rules may not apply in every case.

robots.txt
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /

Asks ChatGPT-User not to crawl any page. Other OpenAI bots are unaffected. Add it to the robots.txt file at the root of your site, above any wider rules.

Ignored robots.txt?

ChatGPT-User fires when a real user's question pulls in your page. To know how often ChatGPT reaches for your brand at all, track your brand mentions in ChatGPT.

To see why ChatGPT-User access is worth checking rather than assuming, read live assistant fetches rising from fourteen a day to seventy-two on one real site.

Spot it in your logs.

Match the name, then check where the request came from. Anyone can copy a user-agent. Search your own logs for ChatGPT-User.

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

Version numbers change. Match the highlighted name, not the whole string.

  1. 1

    Match the name

    Search your server or CDN log for ChatGPT-User, case-insensitive. A match is a clue, not proof.

  2. 2

    Check the published IP ranges

    Compare the request’s source with the list OpenAI publishes. Anything outside it is not OpenAI. openai.com/chatgpt-user.json

Is this really ChatGPT-User?

Published addresses

Paste an address that claims to be ChatGPT-User. It is checked against OpenAI’s published list. Nothing is stored.

Serve the content in HTML

The cited operator material does not verify JavaScript rendering. Serve useful HTML before client-side JavaScript where possible.

How active is ChatGPT-User?

Measured across the sites connected to Trakkr, 27 July 2026 to 25 October 2026.

56%

of connected sites saw ChatGPT-User in the four weeks to 25 October 2026. That is 58 of 104.

100%75%50%25%56%
ChatGPT-User visited between 45% and 56% of connected sites each week from 27 July 2026 to 25 October 2026.

Share of connected sites it visited each week

Rank by reach
5 of 26
Typical site, per week
156 requests
Sites reached, 13 weeks
75 of 135

Most widespread AI crawlers

Share of connected sites each one visited, last four weeks.

  1. 1OAI-SearchBot84%
  2. 2ClaudeBot84%
  3. 3GPTBot67%
  4. 4Amazonbot61%
  5. 5ChatGPT-User56%
  6. 6PerplexityBot56%
  7. 7Applebot51%
  8. 8Bytespider48%
All 26 measured crawlers
How this is measured

Finalized daily crawler summaries from sites connected to Trakkr, grouped by the crawler named in each request. Trakkr’s own site is excluded. A site counts as reached in a week when it logged at least one request from ChatGPT-User. The typical figure is the median weekly requests among the sites it reached.

  • This is a sample of connected sites, not the whole web.
  • A matching user-agent does not prove the named operator sent the request.
  • Requests are not unique pages, training use or citations.
  • Crawlers seen on fewer than 10 sites are not shown. Classic search crawlers such as Googlebot are not collected on every site, so they are left out.

Questions, answered.

ChatGPT-User is a user-triggered OpenAI fetcher for ChatGPT and Custom GPT actions.

Sources.

Officially documented. Operator facts and Trakkr’s measurements keep separate dates.

  1. [1]
    OpenAI crawler documentation

    Officially documented · checked 18 August 2026

    developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots

First verified 18 August 2026. Last source check 18 August 2026. Activity measured to 25 October 2026.

See which AI crawlers read your site.

Trakkr shows which bots, ChatGPT-User included, visit which pages each day, and whether the answers they feed mention you.

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