# Bingbot vs Perplexity-User

Bingbot and Perplexity-User compared on 11 documented fields, from 20 claims, last verified 2026-09-14.

| Field | Bingbot | Perplexity-User | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | yes | yes | same |
| follows_noarchive | yes | not documented | different |
| honours_crawl_delay | yes | not_documented | different |
| opt_out_mechanism | yes | not documented | different |
| publishes_ip_list | yes | yes | same |
| purpose_documented | yes | user_fetch | different |
| reads_llms_txt | not_documented | not_documented | same |
| respects_robots_txt | yes | no | different |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | no | not_documented | different |
| user_agent_string_full | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user) | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | yes | not_documented | different |

## Differences

| Field | Bingbot statement | Perplexity-User statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| follows_noarchive | Bingbot excludes noarchive-tagged content from Copilot and Chat answers and from generative AI training data. | not documented |
| honours_crawl_delay | Microsoft states that a crawl-delay directive in robots.txt always takes precedence over Bing Webmaster Tools crawl control settings for Bingbot. | Perplexity does not publish whether Perplexity-User honours the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive. |
| opt_out_mechanism | Microsoft lets publishers block Bingbot content from Copilot answers and AI training using noarchive and nocache tags. | not documented |
| purpose_documented | Bingbot serves as Microsoft's standard crawler and handles most of Bing's daily web crawling. | Perplexity-User visits web pages to answer questions that users ask Perplexity. |
| respects_robots_txt | Bingbot honors robots.txt directives and other Microsoft-supported control mechanisms that content owners set for crawling. | Perplexity-User ignores robots.txt rules because a user requests each Perplexity-User fetch. |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | Microsoft controls Bingbot's use in AI training through meta tags rather than publishing a separate training-specific crawler token. | Perplexity does not document Perplexity-User as a search or training opt-out token. |
| user_agent_string_full | Bingbot sends a user agent string containing bingbot/2.0 and a link to Microsoft's bingbot.htm page. | Perplexity-User sends the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user). |
| verifiable_by_rdns | Microsoft verifies Bingbot traffic through reverse DNS lookups that resolve to hostnames ending in search.msn.com. | Perplexity does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method for Perplexity-User. |

## Sources

- https://blogs.bing.com/search/April-2025/Introducing-Copilot-Search-in-Bing
- https://docs.perplexity.ai/docs/resources/perplexity-crawlers
- 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
- https://www.perplexity.ai/perplexity-user.json