AI crawlers on Apache: allow or block GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and 78 more

Apache serves robots.txt as a file from the document root. A rewrite rule, in .htaccess or the virtual host, can refuse a request by its user agent. The steps on Apache, what trips people up there, and a page for each of 81 AI crawlers.

This response

You are ClaudeBot (Anthropic). Citable recognised you as an AI agent, so this is https://getcitable.in/crawlers/on/apache with the UI removed — the content only. A browser asking for the same address gets the full designed page.

Where Apache keeps the rule

Apache serves robots.txt as a file from the document root. A rewrite rule, in .htaccess or the virtual host, can refuse a request by its user agent.

The steps below are shown for GPTBot. Each crawler has its own page, with its own names in the rule.

Step by step

What to paste

A group that names a crawler replaces the * group for that crawler; it does not add to it. Paths the * group closes are open to a crawler with its own group unless they are repeated there.

robots.txt, refusing GPTBot:

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

.htaccess, refusing the request itself:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "GPTBot" [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [F]
</IfModule>

robots.txt, allowing GPTBot:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

What trips people up

.htaccess is only read where the server’s AllowOverride permits it, and the rule needs mod_rewrite. Inside the IfModule block a missing module fails silently: the rule is simply not applied.

Asked, or actually refused?

Yes. The [F] flag makes Apache answer 403 Forbidden itself.

Check it yourself

A 200 means the name is let through; a 403 means something in front of the page refuses it. This tests the name from your own address. A platform that checks a crawler’s address as well may treat the real GPTBot differently.

The request:

curl -I -A "GPTBot" https://your-site.example/

Every AI crawler, on Apache

Checked against Apache's own documentation on 1 October 2026

About Citable

Citable strips the UI from a website for AI agents and serves them only the content.

When an AI agent — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or any of the 81 that Citable recognises — opens a page, Citable removes the theme, scripts, navigation and layout and serves only the content: the same facts, at the same URL, on the site's own domain. People and Google still get the full designed page.

How it works: https://getcitable.in/how-it-works · Summary for AI agents: https://getcitable.in/llms.txt

Source: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/on/apache · Citable · Run the free audit · llms.txt · getcitable@gmail.com