What is PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot is the crawler behind Perplexity's search. Perplexity says it "is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity" and that "it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models" (Perplexity: Perplexity crawlers, read 1 November 2026).
Its example user agent string, with a version number that may change:
- Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)
Perplexity publishes the IP addresses at www.perplexity.ai/perplexitybot.json.
PerplexityBot vs Perplexity-User
Perplexity runs a second agent. Perplexity-User visits a page when a user asks a question, to help answer it and link the page. Perplexity says that because a user requested the fetch, it "generally ignores robots.txt rules". It is not used for crawling or for training.
- PerplexityBot: crawls for search results. Managed with robots.txt.
- Perplexity-User: fetches for one user's question. Generally ignores robots.txt.
Perplexity says each setting works independently, and that changes can take up to 24 hours to show.
Why does PerplexityBot matter for B2B SaaS?
Perplexity cites more sources per answer than the other big assistants. In Prefer's study of 960 AI answers (September 2026), Perplexity cited 19.48 sources per answer on average, against 3.05 for ChatGPT. For a software company, that makes it one of the easier places to see who an assistant reads for your category. If PerplexityBot cannot reach your pages, they cannot be among those sources.
Unlike GPTBot or ClaudeBot, there is no training trade-off to weigh here: by Perplexity's own description, this bot is for search only.
How do you allow PerplexityBot?
- Check that your robots.txt does not block PerplexityBot by name or through a catch-all rule.
- If you use a web application firewall, allow requests where the user agent matches PerplexityBot and the IP is in its published list. Perplexity's page gives steps for Cloudflare WAF and AWS WAF.
- Match each bot against its own IP list. PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User publish separate lists.
- Wait up to a day, then look for PerplexityBot in your logs.
A hypothetical example
A hypothetical billing software company asks Perplexity "best subscription billing tools". The answer cites six pages, but never the company's own comparison page. Its logs show no PerplexityBot visits. A firewall rule blocks unknown bots. The team adds an allow rule for PerplexityBot and its IP list. The page can now be crawled; whether Perplexity cites it is Perplexity's call.
How does PerplexityBot relate to other AI crawlers?
PerplexityBot is the Perplexity version of a search crawler, like OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot and Anthropic's Claude-SearchBot. The AI crawler entry compares them.
How does it connect to third-party lists?
Why that matters: when Prefer checked 188 answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude in July 2026, 40% of the sources AI assistants cited for buyer questions were independent lists. Vendors' own sites got 34%.
So your own pages are only part of what Perplexity reads. The lists that name you, or leave you out, matter as much. The LLM SEO guide covers how brands get into them.