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Applebot-Extended vs ChatGPT-User

Applebot-Extended and ChatGPT-User compared on 11 documented fields, from 17 claims, last verified 2026-09-13.

How many of the compared fields have the same answer for both crawlers, and how many differ.

Applebot-Extended and ChatGPT-User, fields comparedApplebot-Extended and ChatGPT-User, fields compared. Different is the largest with 11 fields, out of 11 fields in total.Same: 0 fieldsSame0Different: 11 fieldsDifferent11
Applebot-Extended and ChatGPT-User, fields compared. Different is the largest with 11 fields, out of 11 fields in total. Source: each vendor's own crawler documentation, quoted and dated on every claim page.
FieldApplebot-ExtendedChatGPT-UserComparison
cites_sourcesnot documentednot_documenteddifferent
honours_crawl_delayn/anot_documenteddifferent
publishes_ip_listnoyesdifferent
purpose_documentedpolicy_onlyuser_fetchdifferent
reads_llms_txtnot documentednot_documenteddifferent
respects_robots_txtn/apartialdifferent
robots_token_differs_from_uayesnot documenteddifferent
separate_search_and_training_tokensyesnot_documenteddifferent
user_agent_string_fullnot documentedMozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/botdifferent
verifiable_by_rdnsn/anot_documenteddifferent
what_it_controlsAI training use of content, not search indexingnot documenteddifferent

Differences

FieldApplebot-Extended statementChatGPT-User statement
cites_sourcesnot documentedOpenAI does not publish whether ChatGPT responses cite pages fetched by ChatGPT-User.
honours_crawl_delayApple does not publish a Crawl-delay behaviour for Applebot-Extended.OpenAI does not publish whether ChatGPT-User honours the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive.
publishes_ip_listApple publishes no IP list specific to Applebot-Extended and documents one shared crawl identity for Applebot.OpenAI publishes the IP address ranges used by ChatGPT-User as a JSON file at https://openai.com/chatgpt-user.json.
purpose_documentedApplebot-Extended controls whether website content is used to train Apple general purpose foundation models.ChatGPT-User visits web pages for user actions in ChatGPT and in Custom GPTs.
reads_llms_txtnot documentedOpenAI does not publish whether ChatGPT-User reads llms.txt files.
respects_robots_txtApplebot-Extended is a robots.txt token that publishers disallow to opt out of generative model training.ChatGPT-User fetches pages in response to user actions in ChatGPT, and OpenAI states that robots.txt rules may not apply to ChatGPT-User fetches.
robots_token_differs_from_uaApplebot-Extended is a robots.txt control token and does not correspond to a separate crawler user agent string.not documented
separate_search_and_training_tokensWebpages that disallow Applebot-Extended remain eligible for inclusion in Apple search results.OpenAI does not document ChatGPT-User as a search or training opt-out token.
user_agent_string_fullnot documentedChatGPT-User sends the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot.
verifiable_by_rdnsApple does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method specific to Applebot-Extended.OpenAI does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method for ChatGPT-User.
what_it_controlsApplebot-Extended controls the AI training use of crawled content and does not control search indexing.not documented

Sources