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anthropic-ai user agent

Operated by Anthropic · Model training · Learning from you

robots.txt token
anthropic-ai

anthropic-ai identifies itself with the token anthropic-ai. That is the case-insensitive substring to grep for in access logs, and the exact name to put after User-agent: in robots.txt. It collects pages as training data for a model.

Allow or block anthropic-ai in robots.txt

Robots.txt applies the most specific matching group, so a group naming anthropic-ai overrides your User-agent: * rules for this bot alone.

Allow
User-agent: anthropic-ai
Allow: /
Block
User-agent: anthropic-ai
Disallow: /

What blocking costs you: Legacy Anthropic crawler — block both anthropic-ai and ClaudeBot to fully opt out.

To see which AI crawlers your robots.txt allows right now, run your domain through the AI crawler access checker. To check whether AI answers actually cite you, use the AI citation checker.

Anthropic's other crawlers

Blocking one Anthropic bot does not block the others — each token is a separate group.

FAQ

What is the anthropic-ai user agent?
anthropic-ai announces itself with the User-Agent token "anthropic-ai". That token is the case-insensitive substring to match in server logs and the exact name to put after "User-agent:" in robots.txt. Anthropic does not publish one fixed full string, so match on the token rather than the whole line.
Who operates anthropic-ai and what does it collect?
anthropic-ai is run by Anthropic and collects pages as training data for a model. In the AI picture that puts it under "Learning from you": Feeding the models that power future answers.
How do I block anthropic-ai?
Add a robots.txt group naming the token exactly: User-agent: anthropic-ai followed by Disallow: /. Robots.txt matches the most specific group, so a anthropic-ai group overrides whatever your User-agent: * group says. Legacy Anthropic crawler — block both anthropic-ai and ClaudeBot to fully opt out.
Should I block anthropic-ai?
That depends on what you lose. Legacy Anthropic crawler — block both anthropic-ai and ClaudeBot to fully opt out. Sites chasing AI citations usually keep the live-answer and AI-search bots open and make a separate decision about the training crawlers. Run your domain through the AI crawler access checker to see which ones your robots.txt lets in today.
Can anthropic-ai be spoofed?
Yes. A User-Agent header is self-reported, so any scraper can claim to be anthropic-ai. The token is fine for reporting and for robots.txt, but if you are rate-limiting or firewalling on it, verify the request IP against Anthropic's published ranges before you trust the name.

Paste a full User-Agent line and identify any crawler with the AI bot user agent list and lookup, or see every token side by side.