What is ChatGPT-User?

If you saw "ChatGPT-User" in your server logs, this is what it means. OpenAI uses the ChatGPT-User agent "for certain user actions in ChatGPT and Custom GPTs". When someone asks ChatGPT or a custom GPT a question, it "may visit a web page with a ChatGPT-User agent" (OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers, read 1 November 2026). OpenAI's description also mentions GPT Actions, through which ChatGPT users work with outside apps.

OpenAI gives the full user agent string as:

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

The IP addresses are listed at openai.com/chatgpt-user.json.

Note: some people search "ChatGPT user" to mean a person who uses ChatGPT. This entry is about the user agent.

Does ChatGPT-User follow robots.txt?

Not always. OpenAI writes: "Because these actions are initiated by a user, robots.txt rules may not apply." It also says ChatGPT-User "is not used for crawling the web in an automatic fashion".

And it does not decide search inclusion. OpenAI's page says ChatGPT-User "is not used to determine whether content may appear in Search" and points to OAI-SearchBot for search opt-outs and automatic crawling.

Why does ChatGPT-User matter for B2B SaaS?

A ChatGPT-User visit is a sign that a real person's question led ChatGPT to your page. For a software company that is useful data. Count these visits by page in your server logs, and you see which pages ChatGPT fetches for its users: pricing, docs, comparisons.

Two limits. A visit does not tell you what the person asked or what ChatGPT said about you. And the user agent string can be faked, so check the IP against OpenAI's published list before you trust the numbers.

How do you see ChatGPT-User visits?

  1. Export your server or CDN logs for the last 30 days.
  2. Filter for "ChatGPT-User" in the user agent field.
  3. Keep only requests from IPs in openai.com/chatgpt-user.json.
  4. Group by URL and by week.
  5. Compare with GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot visits, which mean training and search crawling instead.

A hypothetical example

A hypothetical project management tool checks its logs. GPTBot visits the blog. OAI-SearchBot visits most pages. ChatGPT-User visits are rarer and cluster on two pages: the pricing page and a "vs" comparison page. The team reads that as a sign that buyers ask ChatGPT about price and alternatives, and checks that both pages answer those questions in plain text.

How does ChatGPT-User relate to similar agents?

  • GPTBot crawls for training. ChatGPT-User fetches for one user's request.
  • OAI-SearchBot crawls for ChatGPT search. ChatGPT-User does not decide what appears in search.
  • Other assistants have the same kind of agent. Anthropic runs Claude-User and Perplexity runs Perplexity-User. Each acts when an AI agent or assistant fetches a page for a person.

Your robots.txt still matters for the crawlers that follow it. For how assistants pick the pages they cite, see the LLM SEO guide.