llms.txt vs robots.txt: What's the Difference and Why Both Matter in 2026
Two files live at your domain root. They look similar — both are plain text, both at the root, both have "txt" in the name. They're opposites. robots.txt tells search engine crawlers what not to fetch. llms.txt tells AI agents what to load first. One is gatekeeping; the other is curation. Most sites need both — and the way they interact can either reinforce your SEO strategy or quietly sabotage it.
TL;DR Summary
- robots.txt = access control. "Don't crawl this URL." For search engine crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot, AI training bots).
- llms.txt = content curation. "Load this when answering questions about my site." For AI agents at inference time (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini).
- sitemap.xml = third file, third purpose. Exhaustive URL list for traditional search engines.
- Ship both robots.txt and llms.txt in 2026. They're complementary, not alternatives.
- The trap: publishing llms.txt while blocking AI bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot) in robots.txt is self-defeating. Allow them explicitly.
- Check both files with our free tools: Robots.txt Checker + LLMs.txt Checker.
1. Side-by-Side Comparison
The fastest way to understand the difference is the comparison table. Same row, opposite columns.
| robots.txt | llms.txt | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Access control | Content curation |
| Tone | "Don't go here" | "Here's what matters" |
| Audience | Search engine crawlers | AI agents at inference time |
| Read when | Before every crawl | When AI answers a user query about your site |
| Format | Plain text directives | Markdown |
| Standard | RFC 9309 (Sept 2022) | llmstxt.org community spec (Sept 2024) |
| Path | /robots.txt | /llms.txt |
| Content-Type | text/plain | text/markdown or text/plain |
| Required element | None (empty is valid) | H1 with site name |
| Companion file | sitemap.xml | llms-full.txt |
| Adoption | Universal (30+ years) | Growing fast (2 years old) |
| Failure mode if missing | Crawlers crawl everything | AI agents fall back to web search |
Notice the "Required element" row. robots.txt is technically valid even if empty — Google still gives you a 200 OK and assumes "allow all". llms.txt requires at least an H1. Empty llms.txt would actually fail spec validation.
2. What robots.txt Actually Does
robots.txt has been around since 1994. The protocol was finally formalized as RFC 9309 in September 2022 — 28 years after Martijn Koster proposed it. That's a long time to build conventions.
What it controls
- Which URLs crawlers can fetch via Disallow + Allow directives
- Which user-agents the rules apply to (Googlebot, Bingbot, GPTBot, etc.)
- Where the sitemap lives via Sitemap directives
- Crawl rate hints via Crawl-delay (most major crawlers ignore this)
What it doesn't control
Three things robots.txt does not do, but people often think it does:
- It doesn't prevent indexing. If other sites link to a Disallowed URL, Google can still index it (with limited info). Use
noindexmeta tags for real indexing control. - It's not access control. Malicious bots ignore robots.txt entirely. For real access control, use server-side auth.
- It doesn't tell AI what to load. Even when AI agents respect robots.txt, the file gives them rules about what they can crawl, not guidance about what they should read. That's what llms.txt adds.
3. What llms.txt Actually Does
llms.txt is the new kid. Proposed by Jeremy Howard at Answer.AI in September 2024, formalized at llmstxt.org. By mid-2026 it has real adoption: Anthropic, Vercel, Cloudflare, Mintlify, Hugging Face, and thousands of smaller sites.
What it controls
- Which URLs AI agents should load first when answering questions about your site
- How those URLs are grouped (Documentation, Pricing, API, etc.) — semantic categorization
- What context the AI gets up front via the blockquote summary
- Which content can be skipped when context budget is tight (the Optional section)
What it doesn't control
- It doesn't block AI agents. If you want to opt out of AI consumption entirely, that's a robots.txt + ai.txt job.
- It doesn't replace your sitemap. Search engines still need sitemap.xml.
- It doesn't force AI to use it. AI agents can choose to ignore your llms.txt and scrape your HTML directly. Most don't, because the file is genuinely useful — but the spec is honored on a best-effort basis.
4. A Complete Pair: Real Configuration
Here's a realistic pair for a typical SaaS site. Both files coexist; neither contradicts the other.
robots.txt
# /robots.txt for acme.com # Default rule for all crawlers User-agent: * Disallow: /admin/ Disallow: /api/internal/ Disallow: /staging/ Disallow: /*?session=* # Explicitly allow AI bots User-agent: GPTBot Allow: / User-agent: ChatGPT-User Allow: / User-agent: OAI-SearchBot Allow: / User-agent: ClaudeBot Allow: / User-agent: Claude-SearchBot Allow: / User-agent: anthropic-ai Allow: / User-agent: PerplexityBot Allow: / User-agent: Google-Extended Allow: / User-agent: CCBot Allow: / # Sitemap location Sitemap: https://acme.com/sitemap.xml
llms.txt
# Acme Analytics > Real-time product analytics for engineering teams. Connects to > your warehouse in 5 minutes; sub-second query performance at any scale. ## Product - [Features](https://acme.com/features): Real-time dashboards, alerts, audit logs, RBAC - [Pricing](https://acme.com/pricing): Free / Pro / Enterprise tiers - [Integrations](https://acme.com/integrations): Snowflake, BigQuery, Postgres, MySQL, ClickHouse - [Compare](https://acme.com/compare): vs Mixpanel / Amplitude / Heap ## Documentation - [Quickstart](https://acme.com/docs/quickstart): Five-minute setup from npm install to first event - [API Reference](https://acme.com/api): Full endpoint catalog with code samples - [SDKs](https://acme.com/docs/sdks): Official libraries in 8 languages - [Webhooks](https://acme.com/docs/webhooks): Event delivery + retry policy ## Customers - [Case studies](https://acme.com/customers): Real-world deployments - [Reviews](https://acme.com/reviews): G2 and TrustRadius coverage ## Optional - [Changelog](https://acme.com/changelog): Version history - [Blog](https://acme.com/blog): Engineering posts - [Press](https://acme.com/press): Coverage and announcements
These two files do completely different things, and they reinforce each other:
- robots.txt allows the AI bots that read llms.txt
- llms.txt only links to URLs that robots.txt allows
- robots.txt points at sitemap.xml for search engines
- llms.txt curates the same site for AI agents
5. The Self-Defeating Trap
The single most common configuration mistake we see: publishing llms.txt while blocking AI bots in robots.txt. It looks like this:
# robots.txt — DON'T do this if you also publish llms.txt User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: / User-agent: ClaudeBot Disallow: / User-agent: PerplexityBot Disallow: / User-agent: Google-Extended Disallow: /
Why it's broken: having an llms.txt file is an active invitation to AI agents. Blocking those same agents in robots.txt tells them to go away. AI agents that follow web standards check both files. If robots.txt disallows them, they skip your entire site — including the llms.txt you so carefully curated.
The fix is simple: allow the AI bots you want to read llms.txt. Either remove the Disallow blocks entirely, or convert them to explicit Allow blocks like the example in Section 4.
A nuance worth knowing
Some site owners intentionally block GPTBot (the OpenAI training bot) while allowing ChatGPT-User (the OpenAI browse bot). The first reads pages to train future models; the second reads pages to answer this user's current question. If you want to opt out of training but still appear in AI search results, this fine-grained approach works.
6. Where sitemap.xml and ai.txt Fit
Two adjacent files that often get confused with llms.txt and robots.txt.
sitemap.xml
sitemap.xml is the structured URL list for traditional search engines. It catalogs every indexable URL on your site with metadata like lastmod (last modified), changefreq (change frequency), and priority. Search engines use it to prioritize crawling.
How it relates:
- robots.txt references sitemap.xml via the Sitemap directive
- llms.txt does not reference sitemap.xml — they target different audiences with different content philosophies
- sitemap.xml is exhaustive; llms.txt is curated
All three files coexist. Each serves a distinct purpose.
ai.txt
ai.txt is a separate proposal focused on AI training opt-out. It's a different problem from inference-time content guidance. Some sites publish it; adoption is much lower than llms.txt.
Here's how the three AI-era files split:
- ai.txt: "Don't use my content for training future AI models"
- robots.txt (with AI bot rules): "Allow / disallow these specific AI crawlers"
- llms.txt: "When you answer a query about my site, load these pages first"
Most sites only need robots.txt + llms.txt. Add ai.txt if you have a specific training opt-out stance you want to broadcast (e.g., publishers and creator sites).
7. When to Publish Each File
You need robots.txt if...
- You have a website (literally every domain should have one)
- You want to control which URLs search engines crawl
- You want to reference your sitemap.xml location
- You want fine-grained control over AI bot access
An empty robots.txt is valid and means "allow all". Even if you don't have specific rules, ship the file — it's 2 lines and signals to crawlers that you've thought about this.
You need llms.txt if...
- You publish content (documentation, marketing, blog, product pages)
- You want control over how AI agents describe your product
- You care about being included accurately in AI search results
- You compete in a space where customers ask AI assistants for recommendations
That covers about 95% of sites. The exceptions: not publishing llms.txt makes sense if you actively want to stay out of AI search (rare; usually paywalled-content sites or compliance-heavy industries).
You probably need both
If you're running a normal commercial website in 2026, the answer is "ship both". The opportunity cost of not having llms.txt — AI agents describing your product with stale or inaccurate context — compounds over the next 5+ years of AI search adoption.
8. How to Ship Both
Practical workflow for a site that has neither file today:
Step 1: Audit existing robots.txt
Use our Robots.txt Checker to validate yours. Specifically check that:
- The file exists and returns 200 OK
- The Sitemap directive points at a real, accessible sitemap.xml
- AI bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended) are allowed, not blocked
- No JS/CSS resources are accidentally Disallowed (kills mobile-first indexing)
Step 2: Generate llms.txt
Use our LLMs.txt Checker — the same tool includes an AI-powered generator. Enter your domain, get a spec-conformant llms.txt in 30-90 seconds. 50 credits per run, refunded on failure.
Step 3: Edit the llms.txt
Tighten the blockquote summary, refine section names to match how your users think, move low-priority content to the Optional section. See our step-by-step AI generation guide for the full editing playbook.
Step 4: Deploy both files
For most stacks, this is a drag-and-drop:
- Next.js / React:
public/robots.txt+public/llms.txt - Vercel: drop in
public/, deploy - Netlify / Cloudflare Pages: drop in
public/(or your static-asset folder) - Nginx: ensure your config serves both at the root with correct Content-Type
Step 5: Verify
Run both checkers one more time to confirm:
- Both files return HTTP 200
- Correct Content-Type headers
- No contradictions between the two (llms.txt URLs not blocked by robots.txt; AI bots allowed)
- Sitemap declared in robots.txt is reachable
- llms.txt has H1 + blockquote + at least one H2 section
Total time, soup to nuts: 30 minutes if you've done it before, an hour if it's your first time.
9. Frequently Asked Questions
Can I have llms.txt without robots.txt?
Technically yes, but you shouldn't. robots.txt is universal — every site should have one. The cost of missing robots.txt is wasted crawl budget (Google trying to index your admin pages). The cost of missing llms.txt is missed AI optimization. Both matter; both are cheap. Ship both.
My site is static and doesn't change much — do I still need both files?
Yes. Stale content benefits more from llms.txt because AI agents struggle to figure out which URLs are still relevant. A curated llms.txt tells them which pages reflect your current positioning.
What if I'm a SaaS with a logged-in app and a marketing site?
Publish llms.txt on the marketing site, not the logged-in app. The app pages are auth-walled anyway — listing them in llms.txt creates broken links for AI agents. Marketing site llms.txt should cover landing pages, pricing, features, documentation, customer stories.
Do AI agents trust llms.txt?
They trust the structure. The content is treated like any other web content — verifiable, sometimes cross-referenced with other sources. You can't lie in llms.txt and expect the AI to repeat it uncritically. But you can frame what gets loaded first, which has real downstream impact on how the AI describes you.
What about the European AI Act — does llms.txt help with compliance?
Not directly. The EU AI Act focuses on training data transparency and prohibited AI practices. llms.txt is about inference-time content curation, which is a separate concern. For training opt-out, you want robots.txt (per-bot Disallow) and possibly ai.txt.
Will AI agents penalize sites without llms.txt?
No active penalty, but a passive one. Without llms.txt, the AI falls back to scraping HTML and inferring structure. That works, but it's noisier — the AI might cite competitor mentions, old blog comments, or stale pricing. Sites with llms.txt get cleaner, more accurate AI responses about them.
How can I see how AI agents currently describe my site?
Ask ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity directly: "What is yourdomain.com? Who is it for? What are their main features?". Compare the answers across all three. If the descriptions are wrong, generic, or missing key context — that's the gap llms.txt fills.
Audit both files now
Free robots.txt check + llms.txt check. Spot contradictions between the two before AI agents do.
