AI Crawler Readiness: robots.txt & llms.txt

For each domain, find out which AI crawlers your robots.txt allows or blocks and whether /llms.txt exists and follows the structure proposed at llmstxt.org.

Use cases

• Audit whether your site is open or closed to AI search and training crawlers.
• Compare competitors' AI-crawler policies.
• Check client sites for agencies before and after a robots.txt change.
• Validate a new llms.txt.

What it does

• Evaluates 18 AI crawler product tokens by default (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, anthropic-ai, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, CCBot, Bytespider, meta-externalagent, Amazonbot, cohere-ai, DuckAssistBot, MistralAI-User), plus any you add.
• Uses its own RFC 9309 matcher: longest match wins, allow wins ties, * and $ wildcards, merged groups, case-insensitive product tokens, * group fallback.
• Shows the deciding rule and group for every bot, and lists the blocked bots.
• Checks /llms.txt (H1 title, summary, sections, links) and whether /llms-full.txt exists.

Honest user agent, free refusals

The checker always sends its own identified user agent (KelpForestLabs-AICrawlerReadiness/1.0 (+https://apify.com/kelp_forest_labs/ai-crawler-readiness; ...)) and never pretends to be a browser or another bot. If a site refuses it (HTTP 401/403/429), returns a server error or cannot be reached, you get an error row with no verdict and no charge. We don't guess "blocks all AI bots" from a refusal.

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Price
domain (one domain with a verdict)	US$0.002

Each run also has Apify's run-start charge of US$0.00005 per GB of run memory (US$0.00005 at the default 512 MB), charged when the run starts, even if every domain gets an error row.

How to use

1. Open the actor in Apify Console and fill in the input form (or paste the JSON example below into the JSON editor).
2. Optional: set a maximum charge for the run under the run options to cap what a run can cost.
3. Click Start. Results appear in the Output tab as they are produced; export them as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.

You can also start runs from the Apify API or CLI, run the actor on a schedule (for example weekly), and send results to other apps with Apify integrations and webhooks.

Input example

{"domains": ["apify.com", "example.org"], "extraBots": ["MyCustomBot"]}

Output example (local run, Oct 2, 2026; per-bot details trimmed)

{"domain": "https://apify.com", "status": "ok", "robotsTxt": "found", "robotsHttpStatus": 200, "verdict": "all checked AI crawlers allowed", "allowedCount": 18, "blockedCount": 0, "blockedBots": [], "llmsTxt": {"present": true, "valid": true, "title": "Apify", "hasSummary": true, "sections": 9, "links": 72, "issues": []}, "llmsFullTxt": false}

FAQ

Does a block in robots.txt stop AI crawlers? Only crawlers that follow robots.txt. This tool reports the rules; it cannot tell whether a crawler obeys them, and it is not legal advice.

Which crawlers are checked? 18 product tokens such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot and CCBot, plus any you add in extraBots. Names are used only to identify the crawlers; this tool is not affiliated with their owners.

Why did a domain get an error instead of a verdict? The site refused our identified checker (401/403/429), had a server error, or could not be reached. We never guess a verdict, and these rows are free.

Limits: what this actor does not do

• It does not tell you whether a bot actually obeys robots.txt, and it is not legal advice.
• It reads only /robots.txt, /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt (three requests per domain), each with a 60-second limit, so one slow site cannot hold up the rest of the list.
• An HTML page served at /robots.txt (a "soft 404") is treated as no robots.txt: it contains no rules.

Changelog

• 1.0 (October 2026): first public version.