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OpenAITraining crawler

GPTBot

GPTBot is an OpenAI crawler for content that may be used to improve generative AI foundation models.

Training only. It does not decide whether you appear in answers.

Is GPTBot 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
GPTBot
Follows robots.txt
Yes, documented
How to verify it
Published IP ranges
Last checked
18 August 2026

Should you block GPTBot?

Only if you want your pages kept out of training. ChatGPT finds and cites pages through OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT Agent and ChatGPT-User, which a GPTBot rule does not touch.

What blocking each OpenAI bot does
OpenAI botJobIf you block it
GPTBotThis pageTrainingDisallowing 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-UserUser 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 handles search opt-outs with OAI-SearchBot, separately from GPTBot, so a GPTBot block is a training choice.

robots.txt
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Asks GPTBot 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?

Allowing GPTBot creates the possibility of retrieval. To find out whether ChatGPT actually cites or recommends you, track your ChatGPT mentions over time.

To see why GPTBot access is worth checking rather than assuming, read what happened when one site fixed a page its crawlers could not read.

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 GPTBot.

User-agentsource
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; GPTBot/1.4; +https://openai.com/gptbot

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

  1. 1

    Match the name

    Search your server or CDN log for GPTBot, 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/gptbot.json

Is this really GPTBot?

Published addresses

No log handy?

Paste an address that claims to be GPTBot. 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 GPTBot?

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

67%

of connected sites saw GPTBot in the four weeks to 25 October 2026. That is 70 of 104.

100%75%50%25%65%
GPTBot visited between 53% and 75% of connected sites each week from 27 July 2026 to 25 October 2026.

Share of connected sites it visited each week

Rank by reach
3 of 26
Typical site, per week
352 requests
Sites reached, 13 weeks
107 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 GPTBot. 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.

GPTBot is an OpenAI crawler for content that may be used to improve generative AI foundation models.

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, GPTBot included, visit which pages each day, and whether the answers they feed mention you.

14-day free trial. Cancel anytime.