# Applebot vs ChatGPT-User

Applebot and ChatGPT-User compared on 11 documented fields, from 20 claims, last verified 2026-09-15.

| Field | Applebot | ChatGPT-User | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | yes | not_documented | different |
| fallback_to_googlebot_rules | yes | not documented | different |
| honours_crawl_delay | no | not_documented | different |
| observed_paths_fetched | robots_txt_and_home_only | not documented | different |
| publishes_ip_list | yes | yes | same |
| purpose_documented | mixed | user_fetch | different |
| reads_llms_txt | not_documented | not_documented | same |
| respects_robots_txt | yes | partial | different |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | partial | not_documented | 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 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | yes | not_documented | different |

## Differences

| Field | Applebot statement | ChatGPT-User statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | Apple includes links to source websites in Siri and Search answers to broad world knowledge questions. | OpenAI does not publish whether ChatGPT responses cite pages fetched by ChatGPT-User. |
| 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. | OpenAI does not publish whether ChatGPT-User honours the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive. |
| 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 |
| purpose_documented | Applebot crawls content for Apple search results and for training Apple foundation models. | ChatGPT-User visits web pages for user actions in ChatGPT and in Custom GPTs. |
| respects_robots_txt | Applebot respects standard robots.txt directives targeted at Applebot in general search crawls. | ChatGPT-User fetches pages in response to user actions in ChatGPT, and OpenAI states that robots.txt rules may not apply to ChatGPT-User fetches. |
| 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. | OpenAI does not document ChatGPT-User as a search or training opt-out 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). | ChatGPT-User sends the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot. |
| verifiable_by_rdns | Applebot traffic is verifiable by reverse DNS lookup in the applebot.apple.com domain. | OpenAI does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method for ChatGPT-User. |

## Sources

- https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots
- https://openai.com/chatgpt-user.json
- https://rattlesnakesbymail.com/observed/applebot
- https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829