# Applebot-Extended vs Claude-User

Applebot-Extended and Claude-User compared on 12 documented fields, from 18 claims, last verified 2026-09-13.

| Field | Applebot-Extended | Claude-User | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | not documented | not_documented | different |
| honours_crawl_delay | n/a | yes | different |
| publishes_ip_list | no | yes | different |
| purpose_documented | policy_only | user_fetch | 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 | not_documented | different |
| user_agent_string_full | not documented | not_documented | different |
| user_fetch_exception_documented | not documented | no | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | n/a | not_documented | different |
| what_it_controls | AI training use of content, not search indexing | not documented | different |

## Differences

| Field | Applebot-Extended statement | Claude-User statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | not documented | Anthropic does not publish whether Claude responses cite pages fetched by Claude-User. |
| honours_crawl_delay | Apple does not publish a Crawl-delay behaviour for Applebot-Extended. | Claude-User respects the Crawl-delay directive in robots.txt when fetching pages. |
| publishes_ip_list | Apple publishes no IP list specific to Applebot-Extended and documents one shared crawl identity for Applebot. | Anthropic publishes the IP address ranges used by Claude-User as a JSON file at https://claude.com/crawling/bots.json. |
| purpose_documented | Applebot-Extended controls whether website content is used to train Apple general purpose foundation models. | Claude-User accesses websites in response to questions that individual users ask Claude. |
| reads_llms_txt | not documented | Anthropic does not publish whether Claude-User reads llms.txt files. |
| respects_robots_txt | Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt token that publishers disallow to opt out of generative model training. | Claude-User honours industry standard robots.txt directives that signal do not crawl. |
| 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. | Anthropic does not document Claude-User as a search or training opt-out token. |
| user_agent_string_full | not documented | Anthropic does not publish a full user agent string for Claude-User. |
| user_fetch_exception_documented | not documented | Anthropic applies the same robots.txt statement to Claude-User as to ClaudeBot and Claude-SearchBot and documents no exception for user-initiated fetches. |
| verifiable_by_rdns | Apple does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method specific to Applebot-Extended. | Anthropic does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method for Claude-User. |
| what_it_controls | Applebot-Extended controls the AI training use of crawled content and does not control search indexing. | not documented |

## Sources

- https://claude.com/crawling/bots.json
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829
- https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-content-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler