# Applebot vs Applebot-Extended

Applebot and Applebot-Extended compared on 13 documented fields, from 19 claims, last verified 2026-09-15.

| Field | Applebot | Applebot-Extended | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | yes | not documented | different |
| fallback_to_googlebot_rules | yes | not documented | different |
| honours_crawl_delay | no | n/a | different |
| observed_paths_fetched | robots_txt_and_home_only | not documented | different |
| publishes_ip_list | yes | no | different |
| purpose_documented | mixed | policy_only | different |
| reads_llms_txt | not_documented | not documented | different |
| respects_robots_txt | yes | n/a | different |
| robots_token_differs_from_ua | not documented | yes | different |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | partial | yes | different |
| user_agent_string_full | Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4 Safari/605.1.15 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot) | not documented | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | yes | n/a | different |
| what_it_controls | not documented | AI training use of content, not search indexing | different |

## Differences

| Field | Applebot statement | Applebot-Extended statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | Apple includes links to source websites in Siri and Search answers to broad world knowledge questions. | not documented |
| fallback_to_googlebot_rules | Applebot follows Googlebot robots.txt instructions when a robots.txt file mentions Googlebot but not Applebot. | not documented |
| honours_crawl_delay | Applebot does not follow the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive. | Apple does not publish a Crawl-delay behaviour for Applebot-Extended. |
| observed_paths_fetched | Applebot made 6 requests to Rattlesnakes By Mail between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z, to 2 distinct paths, /robots.txt and the home page. Applebot's 6 requests to Rattlesnakes By Mail run from 2026-09-14T12:22:23Z to 2026-09-14T12:59:26Z and alternate the two paths three times. | not documented |
| publishes_ip_list | Apple publishes the IP address CIDR ranges used by Applebot as a JSON file at https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json. | Apple publishes no IP list specific to Applebot-Extended and documents one shared crawl identity for Applebot. |
| purpose_documented | Applebot crawls content for Apple search results and for training Apple foundation models. | Applebot-Extended controls whether website content is used to train Apple general purpose foundation models. |
| reads_llms_txt | Apple does not publish whether Applebot reads llms.txt files. | not documented |
| respects_robots_txt | Applebot respects standard robots.txt directives targeted at Applebot in general search crawls. | Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt token that publishers disallow to opt out of generative model training. |
| robots_token_differs_from_ua | not documented | Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt control token and does not correspond to a separate crawler user agent string. |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | Apple uses one crawler token, Applebot, for search crawling and for training crawling, and a second robots.txt token, Applebot-Extended, that opts content out of training use. | Webpages that disallow Applebot-Extended remain eligible for inclusion in Apple search results. |
| user_agent_string_full | Applebot sends the desktop user agent string Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4 Safari/605.1.15 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot). | not documented |
| verifiable_by_rdns | Applebot traffic is verifiable by reverse DNS lookup in the applebot.apple.com domain. | Apple does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method specific to Applebot-Extended. |
| what_it_controls | not documented | Applebot-Extended controls the AI training use of crawled content and does not control search indexing. |

## Sources

- https://rattlesnakesbymail.com/observed/applebot
- https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829