User-initiated fetch. Perplexity states this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt rules; it is not a crawler and is not used for training.
robots.txt is not the control here
Perplexity-User is not a crawler. It fetches a page when a Perplexity user's question or click requires it.
Perplexity's documentation states that because a user requested the fetch, this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt rules. A Disallow for it is therefore not a reliable way to block it — this checker shows the robots.txt directive, not a guarantee about actual access.
If you genuinely need to block it, the documented approach is User-Agent plus IP-range rules at your WAF, using Perplexity's published IP list.
User-agent: Perplexity-User Allow: /
User-agent: Perplexity-User Disallow: /
Perplexity states robots.txt may not apply to this user-triggered fetch, so a Disallow here is not a guarantee of blocked access.
Official source Operator documentation — last verified against operator docs 2026-09-12
https://docs.perplexity.ai/docs/resources/perplexity-crawlers
"Should you block it?" below is our own interpretation, not the operator's recommendation.
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