Perplexity-User — Perplexity real-time fetch
Perplexity-User is the token Perplexity uses for real-time fetches triggered by a user's question, as opposed to the PerplexityBot indexing crawler. Perplexity documents both. It identifies itself with the Perplexity-User token plus a self-identifying URL, and is a user-triggered fetch rather than a bulk crawl.
What this means
Perplexity-User represents a real-time fetch Perplexity makes when a person's question requires reading a specific page. Unlike PerplexityBot, it is not a background index crawl — it is triggered live by a user's query inside Perplexity.
Perplexity documents the two as separate tokens because they serve different purposes: indexing versus on-demand fetching. A policy decision for one does not carry over to the other, so set each according to what you want to permit.
How Perplexity-User identifies itself
Perplexity-User uses the robots.txt user-agent token Perplexity-User. Its user-agent string contains that token together with a self-identifying URL pointing at Perplexity's bot documentation. Match on the stable token rather than a full version string.
The user agent is a claim and can be copied, so for requests that must be trusted, rely on Perplexity's published guidance rather than the user agent alone, and do not invent IP ranges.
- robots.txt token: Perplexity-User
- User-triggered fetch, distinct from PerplexityBot (indexing)
- User agent contains the token plus a Perplexity URL
robots.txt considerations
To disallow the real-time fetcher site-wide, target its token:
User-agent: Perplexity-User Disallow: /
This affects only Perplexity-User and does not change PerplexityBot's indexing. robots.txt is a request honoured by compliant clients, not an access-control boundary.
How it appears in analytics and logs
A request carrying the Perplexity-User token means Perplexity fetched the URL in real time because a person asked a question that referenced or required that page — a user-triggered bot fetch, not a background index crawl and not a human page view.
Diagnostic use case
Confirm whether a page was fetched on a Perplexity user's behalf, and set robots.txt policy for the real-time fetcher separately from the PerplexityBot indexing crawler.
What WebmasterID can help detect
WebmasterID classifies Perplexity-User requests server-side as an AI fetcher and surfaces them on the bot-intelligence and AI-visibility surfaces, so you can see real-time Perplexity fetches separately from PerplexityBot index crawls and from human visits.
Common mistakes
- Assuming a PerplexityBot block also stops Perplexity-User — they are separate tokens.
- Counting real-time Perplexity fetches as human page views.
- Expecting robots.txt to enforce access rather than request compliance.
Privacy and accuracy notes
Detection uses only the request user-agent. The fetch is triggered by a person, but no visitor identity is exposed to your server beyond a bot request. WebmasterID records it as a bot event, separate from human analytics, and never builds a visitor profile from it.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Perplexity-User the same as PerplexityBot?
- No. PerplexityBot is the background crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity's answer engine. Perplexity-User is a real-time fetch made when a person's question requires reading a specific page. They use different robots.txt tokens and are controlled independently.
Related pages
- PerplexityBot — Perplexity's web crawler
PerplexityBot is the crawler operated by Perplexity to index publicly available web pages for its AI answer engine. Perplexity documents the crawler and its robots.txt token. It is separate from Perplexity-User, which fetches a page in real time in response to a user's question.
- Real-time AI fetcher agents
Real-time AI fetcher agents — such as ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, and Perplexity-User — retrieve a specific page live when a person asks an assistant about it. They are user-triggered, not bulk crawls, and each has its own robots.txt token controlled separately from the vendor's background crawler.
- AI referrals
Track human visits that arrive from AI assistants and answer engines.
Sources and verification notes
- Perplexity — crawler documentationDocuments the Perplexity-User and PerplexityBot tokens.
Last reviewed 2026-06-24. Facts are checked against primary/official sources where available; uncertain specifics are marked “Data not yet verified” rather than guessed.