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// OpenAI crawler

GPTBot:what it is and how to block it

OpenAI says GPTBot crawls content that may be used to train its generative AI foundation models. Disallowing it tells OpenAI not to use your content for that training.

robots.txt token
GPTBot
Operator
OpenAI
Purpose
AI training
Follows robots.txt
Says robots.txt controls access
User agent
Published
IP list
Published
// user agent

GPTBot user agent

robots.txt token
GPTBot
Full user-agent string
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; GPTBot/1.4; +https://openai.com/gptbot

OpenAI gives this as an example and says the version number may change. When GPTBot fetches robots.txt itself, it may add a robots.txt marker to the string.

Source: OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers. Checked October 30, 2026.

// robots.txt

How to block GPTBot

OpenAI documents GPTBot as a robots.txt token, set independently of its other bots. If you allow both GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI may use one crawl for both.

Blocking it stops future crawls for training. It does not affect ChatGPT search, which uses OAI-SearchBot, and it does not remove your site from models already trained.

ChatGPT-User, which fetches a page when a person asks ChatGPT about it, has its own token too, so a GPTBot rule does not cover it.

Block it from the whole site
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
Allow it everywhere
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

Add the group to the robots.txt at the root of each host. A crawler with a group of its own ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any you still want it to follow.

Write rules for all 20 AI crawlers at once
// verify

How to verify a real GPTBot visit

OpenAI publishes GPTBot's IP addresses as JSON. Check a request's IP against that list, because anyone can copy the user agent.

Published IP list
https://openai.com/gptbot.json
// your site

See whether GPTBot visits your site

robots.txt testerCheck whether your rules let GPTBot reach any path, and which line decides it.Open the toolAI crawler blockerSee what your live robots.txt allows GPTBot and the other 19 AI crawlers on our list today.Open the tool
Server Log MonitoringLists GPTBot by name with its hits, its 403s and whether it follows your robots.txt. Hits are checked against OpenAI's published addresses, and fakes land in Fake bots.
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// faq

Questions

Does blocking GPTBot remove my site from ChatGPT search?

No. ChatGPT search uses OAI-SearchBot, which has its own robots.txt token. You can block GPTBot and still allow OAI-SearchBot.

Does blocking GPTBot remove my content from models already trained?

No. A robots.txt rule applies to future crawls only, and OpenAI does not say it removes content already used.

Does blocking GPTBot affect my Google rankings?

No. GPTBot is not Googlebot, so a rule for it changes nothing about how Google Search crawls, indexes or ranks your pages.

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