Rattlesnakes By Mail

Bingbot vs PerplexityBot

Bingbot and PerplexityBot compared on 11 documented fields, from 20 claims, last verified 2026-09-14.

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

Bingbot and PerplexityBot, fields comparedBingbot and PerplexityBot, fields compared. Different is the largest with 7 fields, out of 11 fields in total.Same: 4 fieldsSame4Different: 7 fieldsDifferent7
Bingbot and PerplexityBot, fields compared. Different is the largest with 7 fields, out of 11 fields in total. Source: each vendor's own crawler documentation, quoted and dated on every claim page.
FieldBingbotPerplexityBotComparison
cites_sourcesyesyessame
follows_noarchiveyesnot documenteddifferent
honours_crawl_delayyesnot_documenteddifferent
opt_out_mechanismyesnot documenteddifferent
publishes_ip_listyesyessame
purpose_documentedyessearchdifferent
reads_llms_txtnot_documentednot_documentedsame
respects_robots_txtyesyessame
separate_search_and_training_tokensnonot_documenteddifferent
user_agent_string_fullMozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)different
verifiable_by_rdnsyesnot_documenteddifferent

Differences

FieldBingbot statementPerplexityBot statement
follows_noarchiveBingbot excludes noarchive-tagged content from Copilot and Chat answers and from generative AI training data.not documented
honours_crawl_delayMicrosoft states that a crawl-delay directive in robots.txt always takes precedence over Bing Webmaster Tools crawl control settings for Bingbot.Perplexity does not publish whether PerplexityBot honours the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive.
opt_out_mechanismMicrosoft lets publishers block Bingbot content from Copilot answers and AI training using noarchive and nocache tags.not documented
purpose_documentedBingbot serves as Microsoft's standard crawler and handles most of Bing's daily web crawling.PerplexityBot surfaces and links websites in Perplexity search results.
separate_search_and_training_tokensMicrosoft controls Bingbot's use in AI training through meta tags rather than publishing a separate training-specific crawler token.Perplexity does not document a separate training crawler token alongside PerplexityBot.
user_agent_string_fullBingbot sends a user agent string containing bingbot/2.0 and a link to Microsoft's bingbot.htm page.PerplexityBot sends the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot).
verifiable_by_rdnsMicrosoft verifies Bingbot traffic through reverse DNS lookups that resolve to hostnames ending in search.msn.com.Perplexity does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method for PerplexityBot.

Sources