Rattlesnakes By Mail

Claude-User vs OAI-AdsBot

Claude-User and OAI-AdsBot compared on 11 documented fields, from 18 claims, last verified 2026-09-13.

FieldClaude-UserOAI-AdsBotComparison
cites_sourcesnot_documentednot documenteddifferent
honours_crawl_delayyesnot_documenteddifferent
publishes_ip_listyesyessame
purpose_documenteduser_fetchadsdifferent
reads_llms_txtnot_documentednot documenteddifferent
respects_robots_txtyesnot_documenteddifferent
scope_of_crawlingnot documentedlimited to submitted ad landing pagesdifferent
separate_search_and_training_tokensnot_documentednot_documentedsame
user_agent_string_fullnot_documentedMozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; OAI-AdsBot/1.0; +https://openai.com/adsbotdifferent
user_fetch_exception_documentednonot documenteddifferent
verifiable_by_rdnsnot_documentednot_documentedsame

Differences

FieldClaude-User statementOAI-AdsBot statement
cites_sourcesAnthropic does not publish whether Claude responses cite pages fetched by Claude-User.not documented
honours_crawl_delayClaude-User respects the Crawl-delay directive in robots.txt when fetching pages.OpenAI does not publish whether OAI-AdsBot honours the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive.
purpose_documentedClaude-User accesses websites in response to questions that individual users ask Claude.OAI-AdsBot visits landing pages submitted as ads on ChatGPT to check compliance with OpenAI policies.
reads_llms_txtAnthropic does not publish whether Claude-User reads llms.txt files.not documented
respects_robots_txtClaude-User honours industry standard robots.txt directives that signal do not crawl.OpenAI does not publish whether OAI-AdsBot honours robots.txt disallow rules.
scope_of_crawlingnot documentedOAI-AdsBot visits only pages submitted as ads on ChatGPT.
user_agent_string_fullAnthropic does not publish a full user agent string for Claude-User.OAI-AdsBot sends the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; OAI-AdsBot/1.0; +https://openai.com/adsbot.
user_fetch_exception_documentedAnthropic applies the same robots.txt statement to Claude-User as to ClaudeBot and Claude-SearchBot and documents no exception for user-initiated fetches.not documented

Sources