# Applebot-Extended vs Bingbot

Applebot-Extended and Bingbot compared on 13 documented fields, from 19 claims, last verified 2026-09-14.

| Field | Applebot-Extended | Bingbot | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | not documented | yes | different |
| follows_noarchive | not documented | yes | different |
| honours_crawl_delay | n/a | yes | different |
| opt_out_mechanism | not documented | yes | different |
| publishes_ip_list | no | yes | different |
| purpose_documented | policy_only | yes | different |
| reads_llms_txt | not documented | not_documented | different |
| respects_robots_txt | n/a | yes | different |
| robots_token_differs_from_ua | yes | not documented | different |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | yes | no | different |
| user_agent_string_full | not documented | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | n/a | yes | different |
| what_it_controls | AI training use of content, not search indexing | not documented | different |

## Differences

| Field | Applebot-Extended statement | Bingbot statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | not documented | Copilot Search in Bing delivers clearly cited sources alongside generative answers to support publishers and content owners. |
| follows_noarchive | not documented | Bingbot excludes noarchive-tagged content from Copilot and Chat answers and from generative AI training data. |
| honours_crawl_delay | Apple does not publish a Crawl-delay behaviour for Applebot-Extended. | Microsoft states that a crawl-delay directive in robots.txt always takes precedence over Bing Webmaster Tools crawl control settings for Bingbot. |
| opt_out_mechanism | not documented | Microsoft lets publishers block Bingbot content from Copilot answers and AI training using noarchive and nocache tags. |
| publishes_ip_list | Apple publishes no IP list specific to Applebot-Extended and documents one shared crawl identity for Applebot. | Microsoft publishes Bingbot's IP address ranges as a JSON file at bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json for verification purposes. |
| purpose_documented | Applebot-Extended controls whether website content is used to train Apple general purpose foundation models. | Bingbot serves as Microsoft's standard crawler and handles most of Bing's daily web crawling. |
| reads_llms_txt | not documented | Microsoft does not publish whether Bingbot reads llms.txt files. |
| respects_robots_txt | Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt token that publishers disallow to opt out of generative model training. | Bingbot honors robots.txt directives and other Microsoft-supported control mechanisms that content owners set for crawling. |
| robots_token_differs_from_ua | Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt control token and does not correspond to a separate crawler user agent string. | not documented |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | Webpages that disallow Applebot-Extended remain eligible for inclusion in Apple search results. | Microsoft controls Bingbot's use in AI training through meta tags rather than publishing a separate training-specific crawler token. |
| user_agent_string_full | not documented | Bingbot sends a user agent string containing bingbot/2.0 and a link to Microsoft's bingbot.htm page. |
| verifiable_by_rdns | Apple does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method specific to Applebot-Extended. | Microsoft verifies Bingbot traffic through reverse DNS lookups that resolve to hostnames ending in search.msn.com. |
| what_it_controls | Applebot-Extended controls the AI training use of crawled content and does not control search indexing. | not documented |

## Sources

- https://blogs.bing.com/search/April-2025/Introducing-Copilot-Search-in-Bing
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829
- https://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json
- https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/ai-performance-9f8e7d6c
- https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/crawl-control-55a30303
- https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/how-to-verify-bingbot-3905dc26
- https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/robots-meta-tags-and-attributes-that-bing-supports-5198d240
- https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/which-crawlers-does-bing-use-8c184ec0