Bot signals — AI crawler & agent

Perplexity-User IP addresses

Perplexity user-triggered retrieval egress.

risk.is_airisk.is_crawler Ranges Reviewed

Check an IP

Is this IP really Perplexity-User?

Checks the address against what Perplexity-User publishes, the same evidence behind risk.is_ai.

01 — Verification

How IPAPI.GR verifies Perplexity-User.

Only from what Perplexity-User publishes about itself. No third-party blocklists, no behavioural guesses. Live address counts change with every publication, so check the official file for the current list.

02 — In the response

What a match looks like.

A lookup of a Perplexity-User address sets risk.is_ai and risk.is_crawler. The flags come with geolocation and network data in the same response, for Pro API keys.

This publication is AI crawling or retrieval traffic, so it counts as both an AI source and a crawler.

The response says which kind of bot an address belongs to, not which operator. Pair it with the user agent: a request that claims to be Perplexity-User but doesn't match is unverified.

GET /api/lookup/{ip}?key=PRO_KEY
{
  // … location and network fields …
  "risk": {
    "is_ai": true,
    "is_crawler": true,
    "is_scanner": false
  }
}

03 — Configuration

Allow, block or verify it yourself.

nginx + jq
# 1. Build a geo include from the official file (cron, e.g. hourly).
#    Keep the old file if the download fails or comes back empty.
curl -fsS https://www.perplexity.ai/perplexity-user.json \
  | jq -r '.prefixes[] | (.ipv4Prefix // .ipv6Prefix // empty) | "\(.) 1;"' \
  > /etc/nginx/perplexity-user-ranges.conf.new && [ -s /etc/nginx/perplexity-user-ranges.conf.new ] && mv /etc/nginx/perplexity-user-ranges.conf.new /etc/nginx/perplexity-user-ranges.conf \
  && nginx -t -q && nginx -s reload

# 2. In the http block: 1 when the client IP is in the published ranges.
geo $perplexity_user_ip {
    default 0;
    include /etc/nginx/perplexity-user-ranges.conf;
}

# 3. A request that claims to be Perplexity-User from any other address is an impostor.
map "$http_user_agent:$perplexity_user_ip" $fake_perplexity_user {
    default 0;
    "~*(Perplexity-User).*:0$" 1;
}

# In the server block:
if ($fake_perplexity_user) { return 403; }
Built from www.perplexity.ai/perplexity-user.json, a JSON file with a prefixes array.

04 — Questions

About Perplexity-User.

Where does Perplexity-User publish its IP addresses?

Perplexity-User publishes its addresses at https://www.perplexity.ai/perplexity-user.json. IPAPI.GR reads that publication directly, not a third-party copy.

How often is the Perplexity-User list refreshed?

IPAPI.GR re-fetches it every hour. If a refresh fails, the previous entries expire after at most 24 hours instead of being trusted forever.

Which risk flag does Perplexity-User set?

A matching address sets risk.is_ai and risk.is_crawler in the lookup response. The risk flags are returned for Pro API keys.

Verify Perplexity-User on every request.

Pro: 40,000,000 requests a day with is_ai, is_crawler and is_scanner in every lookup.