# Applebot vs Bingbot

Applebot and Bingbot compared on 13 documented fields, from 22 claims, last verified 2026-09-15.

| Field | Applebot | Bingbot | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | yes | yes | same |
| fallback_to_googlebot_rules | yes | not documented | different |
| follows_noarchive | not documented | yes | different |
| honours_crawl_delay | no | yes | different |
| observed_paths_fetched | robots_txt_and_home_only | not documented | different |
| opt_out_mechanism | not documented | yes | different |
| publishes_ip_list | yes | yes | same |
| purpose_documented | mixed | yes | different |
| reads_llms_txt | not_documented | not_documented | same |
| respects_robots_txt | yes | yes | same |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | partial | no | 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) | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | yes | yes | same |

## Differences

| Field | Applebot statement | Bingbot statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| fallback_to_googlebot_rules | Applebot follows Googlebot robots.txt instructions when a robots.txt file mentions Googlebot but not Applebot. | not documented |
| follows_noarchive | not documented | Bingbot excludes noarchive-tagged content from Copilot and Chat answers and from generative AI training data. |
| honours_crawl_delay | Applebot does not follow the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive. | Microsoft states that a crawl-delay directive in robots.txt always takes precedence over Bing Webmaster Tools crawl control settings for Bingbot. |
| 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 |
| opt_out_mechanism | not documented | Microsoft lets publishers block Bingbot content from Copilot answers and AI training using noarchive and nocache tags. |
| purpose_documented | Applebot crawls content for Apple search results and for training Apple foundation models. | Bingbot serves as Microsoft's standard crawler and handles most of Bing's daily web crawling. |
| 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. | Microsoft controls Bingbot's use in AI training through meta tags rather than publishing a separate training-specific crawler token. |
| 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). | Bingbot sends a user agent string containing bingbot/2.0 and a link to Microsoft's bingbot.htm page. |

## Sources

- https://blogs.bing.com/search/April-2025/Introducing-Copilot-Search-in-Bing
- https://rattlesnakesbymail.com/observed/applebot
- https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json
- 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