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

Cloudflare does not hold a site’s robots.txt; the origin does. But it can add to that file, and it can refuse a crawler before the origin is ever asked. The steps on Cloudflare, 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/cloudflare with the UI removed — the content only. A browser asking for the same address gets the full designed page.

Where Cloudflare keeps the rule

Cloudflare does not hold a site’s robots.txt; the origin does. But it can add to that file, and it can refuse a crawler before the origin is ever asked.

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

Step by step

• 1. Open AI Crawl Control. In the Cloudflare dashboard select the account and domain and go to AI Crawl Control. The Crawlers tab lists each crawler with its operator, its requests, and an Action.
• 2. Set the action for GPTBot. Find GPTBot (OpenAI) and choose Allow or Block in the Action column. If it is not in the table, refuse it with the custom rule below.
• 3. Check the two settings that override you. Under Security → Settings, look at the AI bot setting (“Block AI bots”, or “Configure AI bot policies” in the newer dashboard) and at the managed robots.txt. The managed robots.txt, when on, writes “Disallow: /” for GPTBot ahead of the origin’s own file.
• 4. Read it back. Open /robots.txt through the domain and read what a crawler is given, then test the name with the request below.

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.

A custom rule that blocks it (Security → WAF → Custom rules; action: Block):

(http.user_agent contains "GPTBot")

robots.txt at the origin, refusing GPTBot:

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

robots.txt at the origin, allowing GPTBot:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

What trips people up

The edge answers first. If Cloudflare blocks GPTBot, an Allow in robots.txt changes nothing: the crawler is refused before the origin is asked. A site that allows a crawler on paper and blocks it at the edge is a site that crawler never reads.

Asked, or actually refused?

Yes. A Block in AI Crawl Control or in a custom rule is answered by Cloudflare itself, and the request never reaches the origin.

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 Cloudflare

• OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/oai-searchbot/cloudflare
• ChatGPT-User (OpenAI) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/chatgpt-user/cloudflare
• GPTBot (OpenAI) — Named in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/gptbot/cloudflare
• Claude-SearchBot (Anthropic) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/claude-searchbot/cloudflare
• Claude-User (Anthropic) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/claude-user/cloudflare
• Claude-Web (Anthropic) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/claude-web/cloudflare
• ClaudeBot (Anthropic) — Named in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/claudebot/cloudflare
• Perplexity-User (Perplexity) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/perplexity-user/cloudflare
• PerplexityBot (Perplexity) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/perplexitybot/cloudflare
• Google-Extended (Google) — Named in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/google-extended/cloudflare
• meta-externalfetcher (Meta) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/meta-externalfetcher/cloudflare
• meta-externalagent (Meta) — Named in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/meta-externalagent/cloudflare
• DuckAssistBot (DuckDuckGo) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/duckassistbot/cloudflare
• CCBot (Common Crawl) — Named in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/ccbot/cloudflare
• Applebot-Extended (Apple) — Named in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/applebot-extended/cloudflare
• Bytespider (ByteDance) — Named in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/bytespider/cloudflare
• Amazonbot (Amazon) — Named in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/amazonbot/cloudflare
• YouBot (You.com) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/youbot/cloudflare
• cohere-ai (Cohere) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/cohere-ai/cloudflare
• PetalBot (Huawei) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/petalbot/cloudflare
• Diffbot (Diffbot) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/diffbot/cloudflare
• AI2Bot (AI2) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/ai2bot/cloudflare
• Timpibot (Timpi) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/timpibot/cloudflare
• Kangaroo Bot (Kangaroo) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/kangaroo-bot/cloudflare
• omgili (Webz.io) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/omgili/cloudflare
• MistralAI-User (Mistral) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/mistralai-user/cloudflare
• ChatGPT Agent (OpenAI) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/chatgpt-agent/cloudflare
• Operator (OpenAI) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/operator/cloudflare
• Gemini-Deep-Research (Google) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/gemini-deep-research/cloudflare
• Google-Agent (Google) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/google-agent/cloudflare
• NotebookLM (Google) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/notebooklm/cloudflare
• Kimi-User (Moonshot AI) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/kimi-user/cloudflare
• TongyiBot (Alibaba) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/tongyibot/cloudflare
• YiyanBot (Baidu) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/yiyanbot/cloudflare
• DoubaoBot (ByteDance) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/doubaobot/cloudflare
• Amzn-User (Amazon) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/amzn-user/cloudflare
• AmazonBuyForMe (Amazon) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/amazonbuyforme/cloudflare
• NovaAct (Amazon) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/novaact/cloudflare
• amazon-QBusiness (Amazon) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/amazon-qbusiness/cloudflare
• kagi-fetcher (Kagi) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/kagi-fetcher/cloudflare
• PhindBot (Phind) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/phindbot/cloudflare
• LinerBot (Liner) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/linerbot/cloudflare
• Manus-User (Manus) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/manus-user/cloudflare
• TwinAgent (Twin) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/twinagent/cloudflare
• ShapBot (Parallel) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/shapbot/cloudflare
• bigsur.ai (Big Sur AI) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/bigsur-ai/cloudflare
• QualifiedBot (Qualified) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/qualifiedbot/cloudflare
• KlaviyoAIBot (Klaviyo) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/klaviyoaibot/cloudflare
• Poggio-Citations (Poggio) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/poggio-citations/cloudflare
• iAskBot (iAsk) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/iaskbot/cloudflare
• Crawl4AI (Crawl4AI) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/crawl4ai/cloudflare
• Crawlspace (Crawlspace) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/crawlspace/cloudflare
• WRTNBot (WRTN) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/wrtnbot/cloudflare
• UseAI (UseAI) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/useai/cloudflare
• AIWebIndex (Lyrenth) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/aiwebindex/cloudflare
• Aranet-SearchBot (Aranet) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/aranet-searchbot/cloudflare
• KunatoCrawler (Kunato) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/kunatocrawler/cloudflare
• Reflectionbot (Reflection) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/reflectionbot/cloudflare
• GeistHaus-PageFetcher (GeistHaus) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/geisthaus-pagefetcher/cloudflare
• MistralAI-Index (Mistral) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/mistralai-index/cloudflare
• Kimi-SearchBot (Moonshot AI) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/kimi-searchbot/cloudflare
• meta-webindexer (Meta) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/meta-webindexer/cloudflare
• Bravebot (Brave) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/bravebot/cloudflare
• ExaBot (Exa) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/exabot/cloudflare
• TavilyBot (Tavily) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/tavilybot/cloudflare
• AddSearchBot (AddSearch) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/addsearchbot/cloudflare
• LinkupBot (Linkup) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/linkupbot/cloudflare
• QueritBot (Querit) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/queritbot/cloudflare
• TerraCotta (Ceramic AI) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/terracotta/cloudflare
• HenkBot (Valyu) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/henkbot/cloudflare
• Channel3Bot (Channel3) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/channel3bot/cloudflare
• AzureAI-SearchBot (Microsoft) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/azureai-searchbot/cloudflare
• Amzn-SearchBot (Amazon) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/amzn-searchbot/cloudflare
• atlassian-bot (Atlassian) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/atlassian-bot/cloudflare
• Cloudflare-AutoRAG (Cloudflare) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/cloudflare-autorag/cloudflare
• Andibot (Andi) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/andibot/cloudflare
• Anomura (Direqt) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/anomura/cloudflare
• YandexAdditional (Yandex) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/yandexadditional/cloudflare
• GoogleOther (Google) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/googleother/cloudflare
• ZanistaBot (Zanista) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/zanistabot/cloudflare
• Poseidon Research Crawler (Poseidon Research) — Not in the managed robots.txt: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/poseidon-research-crawler/cloudflare

Checked against Cloudflare's own documentation on 1 October 2026

• Cloudflare docs: Manage AI crawlers: https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-crawl-control/features/manage-ai-crawlers/
• Cloudflare docs: Managed robots.txt: https://developers.cloudflare.com/bots/additional-configurations/managed-robots-txt/
• Cloudflare docs: Block AI bots: https://developers.cloudflare.com/bots/additional-configurations/block-ai-bots/

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/cloudflare · Citable · Run the free audit · llms.txt · getcitable@gmail.com