anthropic-ai
Anthropic · Model training · robots.txt token anthropic-ai
4% of 30,177 measured domains disallow anthropic-ai in robots.txt at the site root. Separately, and independently of robots.txt, 17.4% of 30,187 reachable domains refuse an AI crawler user agent at the network edge on two consecutive probes from different locations - a refusal the site's own robots.txt does not declare and its owner often has not chosen.
Measured 2026-10-06 by direct request to every domain in the corpus. Method: how this is measured. Reuse under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.
Cite as: Crawl Census, "anthropic-ai blocking rate", measured 2026-10-06. https://crawlcensus.com/bot/anthropic-ai
What it is definition
Legacy token widely blocked for Anthropic training; Anthropic now documents ClaudeBot, Claude-User and Claude-SearchBot.
anthropic-ai is operated by Anthropic and classified here as model training. These agents collect text and images that may end up in a training corpus. Disallowing one withholds new content from the next model. It does not withdraw anything collected before the disallow, and it does not remove the site from any answer engine.
Disallowing anthropic-ai withholds content crawled from that point on from Anthropic's training data. It does not withdraw pages collected in earlier crawls, it does not reach copies already sitting in third-party datasets, and it does not remove the site from any answer surface.
- robots.txt token
- anthropic-ai
- Operator
- Anthropic
- Purpose
- Model training
- Honors robots.txt
- yes
- Documentation
- https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler
Identity on the wire exact string
anthropic-aicurl -A 'anthropic-ai' https://example.com/Replace the host with your own. A 403, a challenge page or an empty body means the edge is blocking the agent whatever robots.txt says.
How to allow it, how to block it robots.txt
User-agent: anthropic-ai
Allow: /Absent any rule, the agent is already allowed, so this group only matters when your * group disallows something. Naming the agent replaces the * group for it entirely, so repeat here every disallow you still want to apply to it.
User-agent: anthropic-ai
Disallow: /Disallowing anthropic-ai withholds content crawled from that point on from Anthropic's training data. It does not withdraw pages collected in earlier crawls, it does not reach copies already sitting in third-party datasets, and it does not remove the site from any answer surface.
Sites that block it 60 shown
See every measured domain that blocks anthropic-ai
This list is served from a cache rebuilt just now. It is discarded the moment a rescan records a policy change for this agent, so a site that has just changed its robots.txt will drop off it within one scan rather than waiting for the cache to expire.
Compare Anthropic
Anthropic runs 4 agents in this registry, and they do different jobs. Blocking one says nothing about the others.
Common questions answered
Does blocking anthropic-ai remove me from Claude?
No, not by itself. anthropic-ai collects content for training, not for the index that answers questions. Anthropic's answer surfaces are governed separately by claude-user and claude-searchbot, which stay allowed unless you disallow them too. Content collected before the disallow is not withdrawn.
How do I verify anthropic-ai requests are genuine?
Anthropic publishes the address ranges its crawlers fetch from, linked from its crawler support article. Compare the source address of the request against that list. There is no reverse DNS name to check.
Check your own site free
See whether your robots.txt admits anthropic-ai today, and whether your edge agrees with it.