Kagi

Common mistakes with Kagi's crawlers

The errors we see most often with Kagi's crawlers in the files and firewalls we test:

1. Assuming a robots.txt rule will stop Kagi's crawlers. User-triggered fetches act for a person, and some operators say robots.txt may not apply to them. Check the operator's statement above.
2. Blocking Kagi's crawlers as if it were a bulk crawler. It fetches one page because a person asked; blocking it means that person's assistant cannot read your page.
3. Counting Kagi's crawlers visits as crawl volume. Each request maps to a real user question, which makes the paths it requests a useful signal of what people ask about you.

All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check Kagi's crawlers from outside after every change.

Spotting Kagi in your logs

robots.txt says what Kagi Assistant and Kagi Search may do; your access logs show what they 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 "kagi-fetcher|Kagibot" /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 "kagi-fetcher|Kagibot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Check the requests are genuine

Anyone can send these user-agents, so confirm the source before acting on a match:

• kagi-fetcher: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where Kagi documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable Kagi Assistant request with caution. Check it separately from Kagi Search.
• Kagibot: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where Kagi documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable Kagi Search request with caution. Check it separately from Kagi Assistant.

What our own data shows about Kagi

Everything below comes from the AI Crawler Check bot database and our two most recent robots.txt scans of the Tranco top 10,000, not from Kagi's marketing. It covers 2 Kagi tokens in turn.

kagi-fetcher in our records

We first recorded kagi-fetcher on June 18, 2026. We could not find a page where Kagi names it, so treat the token as reported rather than documented. kagi-fetcher is outside our tracked token set, but 26 of 5,583 top-site files already name it, which is enough to show owners treat it as a real crawler.

Among the 104 AI and LLM crawlers in our database, kagi-fetcher sits 52th by priority (Tier 2), level with AddSearchBot, AI2Bot, AI2Bot-DeepResearchEval, aiHitBot. 81 of the 104 share its safe rating. Other operators with a crawler that fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it: ChatGPT Agent (OpenAI, Tier 1), ChatGPT Operator (OpenAI, Tier 1), ChatGPT-User (OpenAI, Tier 1), ChatGPT-User/2.0 (OpenAI, Tier 1), Claude-SearchBot (Anthropic, Tier 1). A policy for kagi-fetcher is usually a policy for these too.

A decision record for kagi-fetcher

Teams that review crawlers once a quarter keep one short entry per token, so anyone can see why a rule exists and when it was last checked. Filled in from our data, the kagi-fetcher entry reads:

• Operator and job: Kagi; it fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it.
• Priority and behaviour: Tier 2, rated safe, blocking impact low.
• Suggested starting point: Allow, and watch it in your logs.
• Enforcement: kagi-fetcher's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the kagi-fetcher rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.

User-agent: kagi-fetcher
Allow: /

Paste the line into the validator with one of your own URLs before it goes live. Revisit the kagi-fetcher entry whenever Kagi announces a change, because a Tier 2 crawler affects visibility directly.

Kagibot in our records

We first recorded Kagibot on September 22, 2026. Kagi documents it on kagi.com, and we recheck that page before each release. No file in our top-10,000 scans names Kagibot, so any rule you write for it puts you ahead of almost every large site.

Among the 63 search engines in our database, Kagibot sits 19th by priority (Tier 3), level with AdIdxBot, Amzn-SearchBot, Applebot, baidu. 62 of the 63 share its safe rating. Other operators with a crawler that builds a search or answer index: AddSearchBot (AddSearch, Tier 2), AIWebIndex (Lyrenth, Tier 2), atlassian-bot (Atlassian, Tier 2), AzureAI-SearchBot (Microsoft, Tier 2), Cloudflare-AI-Search (Cloudflare, Tier 2). A policy for Kagibot is usually a policy for these too.

A decision record for Kagibot

Teams that review crawlers once a quarter keep one short entry per token, so anyone can see why a rule exists and when it was last checked. Filled in from our data, the Kagibot entry reads:

• Operator and job: Kagi; it builds a search or answer index.
• Priority and behaviour: Tier 3, rated safe, blocking impact critical.
• Suggested starting point: Allow by default; revisit if it costs you bandwidth.
• Enforcement: Kagibot's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Kagibot rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.

User-agent: Kagibot
Allow: /

Paste the line into the validator with one of your own URLs before it goes live. Revisit the Kagibot entry once a quarter, or when Kagi publishes a new token next to it.

How top sites treat Kagi's crawlers

From our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000 (5,583 valid files, fetched October 20, 2026):

None of the tokens for Kagi's crawlers is tracked by name in our study. For scale, 20.1% of top-site files block at least one AI training crawler and 4.3% refuse every unnamed crawler with User-agent: * and Disallow: /, which would catch Kagi's crawlers too.

More questions about Kagi

Will blocking Kagi affect my Google rankings?

Only if one of its tokens is a Google search crawler. None of Kagi's tokens are Googlebot, so classic Google rankings are unaffected.

How quickly does a robots.txt change take effect for Kagi?

Crawlers cache robots.txt, commonly for up to a day. Expect a change to apply within about 24 hours, and confirm it in your logs.

Can I allow Kagi on some sections and block it on others?

Yes. Inside the group for kagi-fetcher, add Disallow lines for the paths to keep private and Allow lines for exceptions. The longest matching rule wins.

Does blocking Kagi delete content it already collected?

No. robots.txt only controls future visits. For content already collected, check whether Kagi offers a removal or opt-out process.

Is a firewall block better than robots.txt for Kagi?

A firewall enforces the decision, while robots.txt asks politely. Many operators recommend robots.txt because blocking their IPs can stop them reading your rules at all. Use robots.txt first, and add a firewall rule only if requests continue.