AI crawlers / anthropic-ai
anthropic-ai: what it is and how to block or charge it
anthropic-ai is run by Anthropic. An older Anthropic robots.txt token; many sites still list it alongside ClaudeBot.
| Operator | Anthropic |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Collects content for AI training |
| User-agent contains | anthropic-ai |
| Official IP list | None published, so it can only be recognized by name. Which crawlers publish one |
| Same operator | ClaudeBot, Claude-User, Claude-SearchBot |
Block anthropic-ai in robots.txt
User-agent: anthropic-ai
Disallow: /robots.txt is a request, not a lock: well-behaved crawlers follow it. To block by user agent at the server, match anthropic-ai in the User-Agent header.
Or charge anthropic-ai per page
Instead of blocking it, answer anthropic-ai with HTTP 402 Payment Required and a price. Crawlers and agents that support x402 pay a fraction of a cent in USDC straight to your wallet and get the page; people and search engines browse free. Set it up free on pay-per-crawl in about five minutes.
Is anthropic-ai reading your site?
See the full list of AI crawlers. Facts here follow each operator's own documentation; tell us if one changes.