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GPTBot vs ChatGPT-User vs OAI-SearchBot.
One trains models, one indexes for ChatGPT search, one fetches live when a person asks. Which robots.txt rule affects which product.
OpenAI runs three public agents with three robots.txt names, three IP address lists and three different consequences for blocking. They are routinely confused in robots.txt files, which is how sites end up blocking ChatGPT citations while trying to opt out of training.
| GPTBot | OAI-SearchBot | ChatGPT-User | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind | training | AI search | live fetch |
| Fires when | on OpenAI's schedule | on OpenAI's schedule | a person asks ChatGPT about a page |
| A hit means | page collected for training | page indexed for ChatGPT search | one reader, via the assistant |
| Blocking affects | future training data | ChatGPT search results and citations | ChatGPT's ability to read the page in a chat |
| IP addresses published | yes, own list | yes, own list | yes, own list |
| Commonly spoofed | rarely | rarely | often |
The usual configuration
Allow OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User, decide about GPTBot on its own. That keeps your pages citable and readable inside ChatGPT while opting out of training if you want to. Rules are per name, so a Disallow under GPTBot does nothing to the other two.
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /
In the report
agenttraffic shows ChatGPT-User and OAI-SearchBot in the AI crawlers section by default and hides GPTBot behind --show-training, because only the first two map to something a person sees. Each row carries its own verified and spoofed counts against the matching OpenAI address list.
See it in your logs
One command, nothing to install
Point it at CloudFront, nginx or Apache logs. All three OpenAI agents get their own row, each checked against its own published address list.
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