# AI Crawler Checker - Who Blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot & Perplexity (`appdata-labs/ai-crawler-access-checker`) Actor

See which AI crawlers each website allows or blocks in its robots.txt — GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot and more — and whether it publishes an llms.txt. One row per site, judged the way the crawlers themselves read robots.txt.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/appdata-labs/ai-crawler-access-checker.md
- **Developed by:** [Kobkoon Janngam](https://apify.com/appdata-labs) (community)
- **Categories:** Agents, MCP servers, SEO tools
- **Stats:** 1 total users, 0 monthly users, 0.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $3.00 / 1,000 site checkeds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## AI Crawler Checker — which sites block GPTBot, ClaudeBot and Perplexity

**See which AI crawlers any website allows or blocks in its robots.txt, and whether it publishes an llms.txt.** One row per site, for 16 crawlers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Google, Apple, Common Crawl, ByteDance, Meta and Amazon, plus Googlebot and Bingbot as a baseline.

**Quick start:** press **Start** with no configuration. It checks twelve well-known news and tech sites so one run shows the whole output shape. Then paste your own domains — yours, your competitors', or a whole market.

Built for SEO and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) teams, publishers deciding their AI policy, and researchers tracking who opts out of AI.

### Sample output

From a real run on 31 October 2026, path `/`:

| domain | robotsTxtStatus | aiSearchAccess | aiTrainingAccess | blocked | llmsTxtFound |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nytimes.com | found | none | partial | 13 of 16 | false |
| theguardian.com | found | partial | partial | 9 of 16 | false |
| bbc.com | found | partial | none | 12 of 16 | false |
| cnn.com | found | none | partial | 12 of 16 | false |
| medium.com | found | full | partial | 6 of 16 | false |
| wikipedia.org | found | full | full | 0 of 16 | false |
| stackoverflow.com | refused | – | – | – | false |

On that run ClaudeBot, Applebot-Extended and Bytespider were each blocked by 10 of the 12 sites, GPTBot by 6, OAI-SearchBot by 3, and Googlebot by none. The Guardian allows every OpenAI crawler but blocks all three of Anthropic's.

Each row:

```json
{
  "domain": "theguardian.com", "path": "/",
  "robotsTxtFound": true, "robotsTxtStatus": "found",
  "robotsTxtUrl": "https://www.theguardian.com/robots.txt",
  "bots": { "GPTBot": "allowed", "OAI-SearchBot": "allowed", "ClaudeBot": "blocked", "PerplexityBot": "blocked", "…": "…" },
  "blockedBots": ["ClaudeBot", "Claude-SearchBot", "Claude-User", "PerplexityBot", "…"],
  "allowedBots": ["GPTBot", "OAI-SearchBot", "ChatGPT-User", "Googlebot", "Bingbot", "…"],
  "namedBots": ["ClaudeBot", "Claude-SearchBot", "…"],
  "blocksAllAi": false, "aiSearchAccess": "partial", "aiTrainingAccess": "partial",
  "llmsTxtFound": false, "llmsTxtBytes": 0, "note": null,
  "checkedAt": "2026-10-31T15:25:30.214Z"
}
```

Rows are about 1.2 KB, small enough to hand straight to an AI agent.

### What each field means

- **`bots`** — every crawler, `allowed` or `blocked` for the path tested.
- **`namedBots`** — crawlers the file names in a group of their own. A site that names GPTBot made a deliberate choice; a site that only blocks `*` may never have thought about it.
- **`aiSearchAccess`** — `full`, `partial` or `none` across the crawlers that put pages into AI answers: OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User.
- **`aiTrainingAccess`** — the same across training crawlers: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, CCBot, Bytespider, meta-externalagent, Amazonbot.
- **`blocksAllAi`** — every AI crawler blocked. Googlebot and Bingbot are not counted.
- **`robotsTxtStatus`** — `found`; `none` (404, or an HTML page served instead, so everything is allowed); `refused` (the site answered 401, 403, 418 or 429 to us, so we cannot see what the crawlers see); `error` (5xx or no answer).
- **`llmsTxtFound`** — `/llms.txt` answers 200 with text. An HTML page served at that address, which many sites do for any unknown path, does not count.

### Input

| Field | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `websites` | 12 news and tech sites | Domains or URLs. A URL with a path tests that path. Up to 1,000. A bad entry is skipped with a reason in the log and in `SUMMARY`; the rest still run. |
| `path` | `/` | The path tested for bare domains. Use `/blog/` to see whether AI crawlers may read your articles. |

### Why these checks

robots.txt is how site owners tell each AI vendor what it may do, and each vendor documents its own tokens: [OpenAI](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots), [Anthropic](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler), [Perplexity](https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots), [Google-Extended](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers), [Applebot-Extended](https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829), [Amazonbot](https://developer.amazon.com/amazonbot) and [CCBot](https://commoncrawl.org/ccbot). Those pages separate **training** from **search**: blocking GPTBot keeps a site out of OpenAI's training data, while OAI-SearchBot decides whether ChatGPT search can show it. A site that blocks both may be giving up citations it did not mean to.

Being cited matters more each month. In the GEO study ([arXiv 2311.09735](https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735)), simple content changes raised a page's visibility in AI answers by up to 40% — but only on pages the engine could read. For the content side, run **AI Search Readiness Audit** on the page.

The file is read the way the crawlers read it ([RFC 9309](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309.html)): a crawler follows the group that names it and ignores `*` when one does; longest match wins; `*` and `$` wildcards are supported.

### FAQ

**Does this crawl the site?** No. Two requests per site, `/robots.txt` and `/llms.txt`, nothing else.

**Does "allowed" guarantee the crawler reads my page?** No. robots.txt says what is permitted. A firewall or bot wall can still turn a crawler away. If we are refused ourselves, the row says `refused` and gives no verdict.

**Is ChatGPT-User bound by robots.txt?** OpenAI says user-initiated fetches may not follow it. The row reports what your file says either way.

**What am I charged for?** One event per site whose robots.txt was read or confirmed missing. Sites that refuse us or do not answer are returned and not charged.

### Works well with

Same publisher, same output conventions, same honest-failure rules:

- [**ai-search-readiness-audit**](https://apify.com/appdata-labs/ai-search-readiness-audit) — A 0–100 score for how citable a page is by ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, with fixes.

### Disclaimer

This Actor is unofficial and not affiliated with OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Google, Apple, Common Crawl, ByteDance, Meta, Amazon or Microsoft. It scrapes no website content and calls no third-party API: it reads two public files that sites publish for automated clients, identifying itself honestly in its user agent. Crawler names are the vendors' own and are used only to describe their crawlers.

# Actor input Schema

## `websites` (type: `array`):

Domains or URLs to check, for example nytimes.com or https://www.bbc.com/news. A URL with a path checks that path; a bare domain checks the path below. Up to 1,000 per run. An entry that is not a public website is skipped with a reason; the rest still run.

## `path` (type: `string`):

The page path each crawler is judged on, when an entry is a bare domain. "/" is the home page; use a section such as /blog/ to see whether AI crawlers may read your articles. Must start with /.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "websites": [
    "nytimes.com",
    "https://www.bbc.com/news"
  ],
  "path": "/blog/"
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `rows` (type: `string`):

One row per site: each AI crawler allowed or blocked for the path, the blocked and allowed lists, and llms.txt.

## `summary` (type: `string`):

How many sites were checked, how many block each crawler, how many publish llms.txt, and any entry skipped with the reason.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "websites": [
        "nytimes.com",
        "theguardian.com",
        "bbc.com",
        "cnn.com",
        "reuters.com",
        "washingtonpost.com",
        "theverge.com",
        "techcrunch.com",
        "wired.com",
        "stackoverflow.com",
        "medium.com",
        "wikipedia.org"
    ],
    "path": "/"
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("appdata-labs/ai-crawler-access-checker").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "websites": [
        "nytimes.com",
        "theguardian.com",
        "bbc.com",
        "cnn.com",
        "reuters.com",
        "washingtonpost.com",
        "theverge.com",
        "techcrunch.com",
        "wired.com",
        "stackoverflow.com",
        "medium.com",
        "wikipedia.org",
    ],
    "path": "/",
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("appdata-labs/ai-crawler-access-checker").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "websites": [
    "nytimes.com",
    "theguardian.com",
    "bbc.com",
    "cnn.com",
    "reuters.com",
    "washingtonpost.com",
    "theverge.com",
    "techcrunch.com",
    "wired.com",
    "stackoverflow.com",
    "medium.com",
    "wikipedia.org"
  ],
  "path": "/"
}' |
apify call appdata-labs/ai-crawler-access-checker --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,appdata-labs/ai-crawler-access-checker"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/zDZfpRp2mFDTjK4SO/builds/cdc889LtwDlQKsy16/openapi.json