# ChatGPT-User vs Claude-SearchBot

ChatGPT-User and Claude-SearchBot compared on 9 documented fields, from 18 claims, last verified 2026-09-13.

| Field | ChatGPT-User | Claude-SearchBot | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | not_documented | not_documented | same |
| honours_crawl_delay | not_documented | yes | different |
| publishes_ip_list | yes | yes | same |
| purpose_documented | user_fetch | search | different |
| reads_llms_txt | not_documented | not_documented | same |
| respects_robots_txt | partial | yes | different |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | not_documented | yes | different |
| user_agent_string_full | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot | not_documented | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | not_documented | not_documented | same |

## Differences

| Field | ChatGPT-User statement | Claude-SearchBot statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| honours_crawl_delay | OpenAI does not publish whether ChatGPT-User honours the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive. | Claude-SearchBot respects the Crawl-delay directive in robots.txt when crawling domains. |
| purpose_documented | ChatGPT-User visits web pages for user actions in ChatGPT and in Custom GPTs. | Claude-SearchBot analyses online content to improve the relevance and accuracy of Claude search responses. |
| respects_robots_txt | 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. | Claude-SearchBot honours industry standard robots.txt directives that signal do not crawl. |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | OpenAI does not document ChatGPT-User as a search or training opt-out token. | Anthropic separates search and training controls into two robots.txt tokens: Claude-SearchBot for search and ClaudeBot for training. |
| user_agent_string_full | 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. | Anthropic does not publish a full user agent string for Claude-SearchBot. |

## Sources

- https://claude.com/crawling/bots.json
- https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots
- https://openai.com/chatgpt-user.json
- https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-content-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler