Can AI crawlers actually reach your site?

Free AI crawler access checker - per-bot verdict in seconds, no login

Your robots.txt can say "yes" while your host quietly says "no". Plenty of hosting stacks - Cloudflare's default-on AI blocking, Hostinger shared plans, Imperva, Sucuri - challenge or drop AI crawlers at the network edge before robots.txt is ever read. The bot never sees your page, so ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI never cite you.

This checker resolves your origin, fingerprints your ASN and any bot-protection vendor, and parses robots.txt to give you a per-bot verdict for the AI crawlers that matter. No login, no credit card.

8 AI bots checked · ASN + bot-protection fingerprint · robots.txt parse · cached 30 min

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Per-bot verdicts

Origin fingerprint

Get the real fetch test - not just robots.txt

This free check reads robots.txt and fingerprints your edge. Sign up free to have ChatGPT Search and Perplexity actually fetch your URL through their own browsing tools - the ground-truth test - plus monitoring and exportable reports.

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Why your host blocks AI crawlers even when robots.txt allows them

Most people debug AI crawler access by reading robots.txt. That is only half the story. robots.txt is a polite request a well-behaved bot reads after it connects. The block that actually hurts you happens one layer earlier, at the network edge, before robots.txt is ever served.

From auditing 50+ brands, these are the usual culprits:

  1. Cloudflare "Block AI bots". A single toggle in the dashboard that drops GPTBot, ClaudeBot and friends with a 403 or a managed challenge. Default-on for many new zones now.
  2. Hostinger shared hosting. Injects a reCAPTCHA / "Bot Verification" interstitial on datacenter IPs. AI fetchers fail the challenge and see a wall, not your content.
  3. Imperva and Sucuri WAFs. Aggressive bot-management rules that challenge anything that is not a logged-in human browser.
  4. Generic "security" plugins. Rate-limit or block by user-agent, catching AI crawlers in a net meant for scrapers.

The fix is almost never in robots.txt. It is in the edge config. This tool tells you which layer is biting you.

Which AI bots this crawler checker tests

We check the eight crawlers that decide whether you show up in AI answers:

  • GPTBot - OpenAI's training crawler. Feeds the model's base knowledge of your brand.
  • OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User - OpenAI's search + live-fetch agents. These are what fetch you when ChatGPT answers a shopping question right now.
  • ClaudeBot and Claude-User - Anthropic's crawler and live fetcher.
  • PerplexityBot - Perplexity's crawler. Block it and you are invisible in one of the fastest-growing answer engines.
  • Google-Extended - controls whether Google uses your content for Gemini and AI Overviews.
  • Applebot-Extended - Apple Intelligence's opt-out crawler.

How to read your AI access score

The access score is the share of those eight bots that can actually reach you. Allowed means robots.txt permits the bot and we saw no edge challenge. Blocked means robots.txt explicitly disallows it - the cleanest, easiest fix. Likely blocked means robots.txt is fine but your origin returned a bot-protection challenge, so datacenter-based fetchers will probably fail.

Your passwords strong, your robots.txt clean, and still scoring low? Then the edge is the problem, and the fingerprint panel names the vendor doing it.

How to unblock AI crawlers

  1. Cloudflare. Dashboard → your zone → Security → Bots, turn off "Block AI bots". Then check WAF → Custom rules for anything matching AI user-agents and add an allow rule for the verified bots above.
  2. Hostinger. The reCAPTCHA injection is plan-level. Move the site behind Cloudflare (free tier) with AI bots allowed, or upgrade off the shared plan that injects it.
  3. Imperva / Sucuri. Allowlist the AI crawler user-agents and their published IP ranges in the WAF bot policy. Both vendors document verified-bot allowlists.
  4. robots.txt. If a bot shows Blocked, open /robots.txt and remove the Disallow: / under that bot's User-agent block. Just buy yourself the access - do not leave a stray legacy rule killing your visibility.

robots.txt vs edge blocking - why they disagree

robots.txt is an honor-system file served at the application layer. Edge blocking is enforced at the network layer by your CDN or WAF. A bot hitting a Cloudflare challenge never gets far enough to read your permissive robots.txt. That is why a site can pass every robots.txt linter and still be invisible to AI - and why a per-bot real-world verdict beats reading a text file.

Frequently asked questions

Is this AI crawler checker free?

Yes. Enter a URL and get a per-bot verdict with no login. The deeper test - asking ChatGPT Search and Perplexity to actually fetch your URL - is one free sign-up away.

Does a green score guarantee AI will cite me?

No. Access is necessary, not sufficient. It removes the blocker. Whether you get cited still depends on content, schema and authority. This tool makes sure you are not losing before the game starts.

Why test live instead of just reading robots.txt?

Because the block that hurts most happens at the edge, before robots.txt is read. We fingerprint the origin and parse robots.txt together so you see the real reason a bot cannot reach you.

How often can I run it?

Up to 10 checks a day per visitor on the free page. Sign up free to lift the cap, run the real AI-fetch probes, and monitor a domain over time.

Related free tools: Agent Readiness Checker · Structured Data Tester · Brand Check.