Safe Reported AI & LLM Bots

Anthropic AI (Deprecated)

Operated by Anthropic

Quick Facts

User-Agent:
anthropic-ai
Category:
AI & LLM Bots
Operator:
Anthropic
Safety:
Safe
Blocking Impact:
Low - No SEO ranking impact
SEO Impact Score:
2/10
Official docs:
None published by Anthropic
Evidence:
Verified by AI Crawler Check: in 593 top-10k robots.txt files

Reported, not operator documented

Anthropic has not published a crawler page that names anthropic-ai. It is listed here on our own evidence. Verified by AI Crawler Check: 593 of the 5,583 valid robots.txt files in the Tranco top 10,000 carry a rule for anthropic-ai, so site owners treat it as a real crawler name (how we measure this). That proves the spelling is in use, not who sends it. Legacy Anthropic token from before ClaudeBot. Anthropic no longer documents it; older robots.txt files still carry it.

What that means for you: the anthropic-ai rule on this page is the best available spelling, but Anthropic has made no statement of purpose, crawl rate or robots.txt compliance. Treat a anthropic-ai request in your logs as a clue, not proof of who sent it, and add a firewall rule if that traffic matters to you. If the operator publishes documentation, this profile moves to Official docs.

What is Anthropic AI (Deprecated)?

Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is an AI data-collection crawler operated by Anthropic. It gathers public web content to build or refine training datasets for large language models. Like other AI training crawlers, Anthropic AI (Deprecated) does not influence your search-engine rankings, so you can block it via robots.txt without any SEO penalty if you wish to opt out of AI training.

Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is an AI data-collection crawler operated by Anthropic. It gathers public web content to build or refine training datasets for large language models. Like other AI training crawlers, Anthropic AI (Deprecated) does not influence your search-engine rankings, so you can block it via robots.txt without any SEO penalty if you wish to opt out of AI training.
Anthropic AI (Deprecated) uses the user-agent token anthropic-ai. You can control it via robots.txt, meta tags (noai), or the emerging llms.txt standard. Robots.txt is voluntary; for hard enforcement, combine it with server-level IP blocking.

What happens if you block Anthropic AI (Deprecated)?

✅ No SEO Impact - Blocking Anthropic AI (Deprecated) does not affect your rankings in Google, Bing, or any other search engine. Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is an AI crawler, not a traditional search indexer. You can freely block it via User-agent / Disallow: / without any SEO penalty.
Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value.

Want to see whether Anthropic AI (Deprecated) actually visits you? Read how do I monitor AI bot traffic to my website?

How to block Anthropic AI (Deprecated) with robots.txt

<code>User-agent: anthropic-ai</code> - Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.

Block completely (robots.txt)
User-agent: anthropic-ai Disallow: /
Allow all (robots.txt)
User-agent: anthropic-ai Allow: /
Block private only (robots.txt)
User-agent: anthropic-ai Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /api/ Disallow: /admin/ Allow: /
Nginx server block
# Nginx: Hard-block Anthropic AI (Deprecated) if ($http_user_agent ~* "anthropic-ai") { return 403 "Bot blocked"; }
Apache .htaccess
# Apache: Hard-block Anthropic AI (Deprecated) SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "anthropic-ai" bad_bot Order Allow,Deny Allow from all Deny from env=bad_bot
Meta robots tag
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
X-Robots-Tag header
X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Is Anthropic AI (Deprecated) safe to allow?

Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is rated Safe in this directory, meaning there are no credible public reports of abusive crawling under this name. It is a Reported token: Anthropic has not published documentation for it, so its purpose, crawl rate and robots.txt behaviour are not confirmed by the operator, and anyone can send the same user-agent string. Allow or block it on its stated purpose, and back the robots.txt rule with a firewall rule if the traffic matters to you.
Anthropic publishes no IP ranges or reverse-DNS pattern for Anthropic AI (Deprecated), so the user-agent string cannot be verified. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.

What does Anthropic AI (Deprecated) do?

Understanding Anthropic AI (Deprecated)'s purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.

  • Collects public web content to train large language models
  • Builds and refreshes AI training datasets
  • Harvests text, code, and structured data for model improvement
  • Does NOT affect search-engine rankings
  • Can be blocked to opt out of AI training without SEO loss

Anthropic AI (Deprecated) in context

Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is a training crawler operated by Anthropic. In plain terms, it collects pages to train AI models. Our database files it under AI and LLM crawlers and ranks it Tier 2, important crawlers from established AI and search operators. 74 of the 104 AI and LLM crawlers in our database share this tier.

Its safety rating is safe and its blocking impact is low. So the decision about Anthropic AI (Deprecated) rests on what you want from Anthropic, not on its behaviour. How we rate safety and impact.

How site owners treat Anthropic AI (Deprecated)

In our own study of robots.txt files across the Tranco top 10,000 sites (fetched October 20, 2026, 5,583 valid files), 593 files (10.6%) name anthropic-ai in a User-agent line, and 696 (12.5%) block it from the homepage. 469 of those blocks come from a group written for this crawler by name, and 227 come from a broad User-agent: * rule that catches it by accident. Larger sites are stricter: 15.6% of the top 1,000 block it, against 12.9% of the middle band and 11.6% of the tail.

Does it follow robots.txt?

Anthropic AI (Deprecated)'s operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Anthropic AI (Deprecated) rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.

Anthropic crawlers and close alternatives

Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is one of 6 Anthropic crawlers in our database. A User-agent: anthropic-ai group controls Anthropic AI (Deprecated) only; the other Anthropic tokens below need their own lines.

  • anthropic-ai: this crawler (Tier 2)
  • Claude-Code: Claude Code Agent, fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it (Tier 2)
  • Claude-SearchBot: Claude Search, fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it (Tier 1)
  • Claude-User: Claude User Agent, fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it (Tier 1)
  • Claude-Web: Claude Web (Deprecated), fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it (Tier 2)
  • ClaudeBot: Claude AI Training, collects pages to train AI models (Tier 1)

To give Anthropic AI (Deprecated) the same answer as its siblings, stack User-agent: anthropic-ai with their lines above one set of rules; to treat Anthropic AI (Deprecated) differently, give it its own group.

Other AI and LLM crawlers that do the same job (collects pages to train AI models) include Google-Extended from Google, GPTBot from OpenAI, Meta-ExternalAgent from Meta, AI2Bot from Allen Institute for AI, aiHitBot from aiHit, bedrockbot from Amazon. Deciding about Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is usually a decision about the whole group, so check how your file treats these too.

We first recorded anthropic-ai on March 17, 2026. We could not find a page where Anthropic names it, so treat the token as reported rather than documented.

Which rule Anthropic AI (Deprecated) actually follows

Anthropic AI (Deprecated) reads exactly one group in robots.txt, the most specific one that names anthropic-ai, and never combines rules across groups. This short file shows the trap:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/

User-agent: anthropic-ai
Disallow: /drafts/
  1. Find the group. Anthropic AI (Deprecated) looks for a group naming anthropic-ai. One exists, so it ignores User-agent: * completely.
  2. Apply only that group. It is refused /drafts/ and nothing else.
  3. The surprise. /private/ is open to Anthropic AI (Deprecated), because that rule lives in the * group it no longer reads. To keep it out of both, repeat Disallow: /private/ inside its own group.
Test yourself: does a rule under User-agent: * apply to Anthropic AI (Deprecated) if the file also has a User-agent: anthropic-ai group?

No. Once a group names it, Anthropic AI (Deprecated) reads only that group. Put every rule you want it to follow inside its own group.

Test yourself: will blocking Anthropic AI (Deprecated) remove your pages from AI answers?

No. Anthropic AI (Deprecated) collects training data. Blocking it changes what future models learn, not which pages AI answers cite today.

Test yourself: is User-agent: anthropic-ai the same as User-agent: anthropic-ai?

Yes. RFC 9309 makes user-agent matching case-insensitive. Paths are a different story: Disallow: /Blog/ does not block /blog/.

Should you allow Anthropic AI (Deprecated)? Decide by situation

Recommended setting for Anthropic AI (Deprecated) by type of site
If you are...Recommended setting
You publish content and want AI answers to cite itYour call. Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is a training crawler, so blocking it does not remove you from AI answers; retrieval crawlers do that job.
You license content and want to stop AI trainingBlock it by name with User-agent: anthropic-ai and Disallow: /.
You run an online shopAllow it unless your logs show it is costly.
Your server is under load from botsRate-limit before blocking. It is rated safe in our database.

Check Anthropic AI (Deprecated) on your own site

  1. Open /robots.txt on your domain and search for anthropic-ai. If it is not named, it follows User-agent: *.
  2. List the Disallow lines in the group Anthropic AI (Deprecated) follows and test your key URLs against them; the longest match wins, and Allow wins a tie.
  3. Look beyond the file. A firewall or bot manager can refuse Anthropic AI (Deprecated) even when robots.txt allows it, and that never shows in the file.
  4. Run our blocked AI crawler check to see how Anthropic AI (Deprecated) and every other crawler we track are treated in one pass, including firewall refusals.

Common mistakes with Anthropic AI (Deprecated)

The errors we see most often with Anthropic AI (Deprecated) in the files and firewalls we test:

  1. Assuming that blocking Anthropic AI (Deprecated) removes you from AI answers. It is a training crawler; AI answers are fed by retrieval and user-triggered crawlers with different tokens.
  2. Blocking Anthropic AI (Deprecated) with a broad User-agent: * rule that also catches search engines. Name anthropic-ai in its own group instead.
  3. Expecting a Anthropic AI (Deprecated) block to remove content already collected. robots.txt only affects future visits.

All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check Anthropic AI (Deprecated) from outside after every change.

Spotting Anthropic AI (Deprecated) in your logs

robots.txt says what Anthropic AI (Deprecated) may do; your access logs show what it actually did.

Count requests

On a server with standard Nginx or Apache logs, this counts matching requests per day (adjust the log path for your host):

grep -iE "anthropic-ai" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $4}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c

And this shows which paths it requested most, which is the quickest way to see whether your Disallow lines are being respected:

grep -iE "anthropic-ai" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Check the requests are genuine

Anyone can send the Anthropic AI (Deprecated) user-agent, so confirm the source before acting on a match:

  • anthropic-ai: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where the operator documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable Anthropic AI (Deprecated) request with caution.

Frequently Asked Questions

What user-agent string does Anthropic AI (Deprecated) use?
Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is reported to identify itself with anthropic-ai. Evidence that the spelling is in real use comes from our own robots.txt study: 593 of the 5,583 valid robots.txt files in the Tranco top 10,000 name it (fetched October 20, 2026), not from Anthropic, which has not published crawler documentation naming it. Use it in robots.txt as the best available match, and treat a request carrying it as a clue rather than proof of who sent it.
Is Anthropic AI (Deprecated) safe?
Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is rated Safe in this directory, meaning there are no credible public reports of abusive crawling under this name. It is a Reported token: Anthropic has not published documentation for it, so its purpose, crawl rate and robots.txt behaviour are not confirmed by the operator, and anyone can send the same user-agent string. Allow or block it on its stated purpose, and back the robots.txt rule with a firewall rule if the traffic matters to you.
Will blocking Anthropic AI (Deprecated) hurt my SEO?
✅ No SEO Impact - Blocking Anthropic AI (Deprecated) does not affect your rankings in Google, Bing, or any other search engine. Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is an AI crawler, not a traditional search indexer. You can freely block it via User-agent / Disallow: / without any SEO penalty.
How do I block Anthropic AI (Deprecated) in robots.txt?
Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file:
User-agent: anthropic-ai
Disallow: /

This instructs Anthropic AI (Deprecated) not to crawl any path on your site. To block only specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/).
Does Anthropic AI (Deprecated) respect robots.txt?
Not documented. Anthropic has published no statement that Anthropic AI (Deprecated) reads robots.txt. A rule for anthropic-ai will stop a client that chooses to honour it; for enforcement, add a firewall or CDN rule as well.
How do I verify if Anthropic AI (Deprecated) is crawling my site?
Search your access logs for anthropic-ai (for example grep -i "anthropic-ai" /var/log/nginx/access.log). Because the operator publishes no IP ranges or reverse-DNS pattern, a match shows that something used the name, not that Anthropic sent it.

Related Bots

WhatsApp us