AI Crawler Check vs the TechnicalSEO.com robots.txt tools
This is the closest comparison on the site: both tools are free, run in a browser and need no sign-up. TechnicalSEO.com is excellent for precise questions about one URL, its page resources and a draft rule. AI Crawler Check is built for the wider AI question: how 265 crawlers are treated, why, and what it means for your visibility score.
Short answer
Use the TechnicalSEO.com robots.txt Tester when you want to test one URL, check whether its CSS and JavaScript resources are disallowed, or try an edited rule. Use AI Crawler Check when you want a full crawler matrix with purpose labels, a 0 to 100 AI Visibility Score and the wider GEO audit in one report.
Choose TechnicalSEO.com robots.txt tools when
- You want to test one specific URL against a robots.txt rule and see exactly how it is matched.
- You need to know whether the CSS, JavaScript and images a page depends on are disallowed, which affects rendering.
- You want to paste an edited robots.txt and test it before publishing.
- You already use their other free tools, such as fetch and render or the hreflang tester, in the same workflow.
Choose AI Crawler Check when
- You want every crawler we track, 265 of them, evaluated in one pass and grouped into 8 categories.
- You want to know what each bot is for: model training, live AI search, or a user-triggered assistant.
- You want a single score that weights crawlers by importance across 6 tiers, so you can track progress.
- You want the wider AI readiness picture: llms.txt, schema, sitemaps and the rest of the 42 GEO checks.
- You want to read about a bot after the test, using our 384-page directory of bots and 112 operators.
Side by side
| What you are comparing | AI Crawler Check | TechnicalSEO.com robots.txt tools |
|---|---|---|
| Comparable. Price and sign-up | Free, no sign-up | Free, no sign-up |
| Comparable. Test a single URL path precisely | Tests the URL you enter for every crawler | Yes, shows whether the URL is blocked and how |
| Advantage TechnicalSEO.com robots.txt tools. Checks page resources (CSS, JS, images) | No. We test the page URL, not each resource it loads | Yes, reports whether the resources for the page are disallowed |
| Advantage TechnicalSEO.com robots.txt tools. Test an edited robots.txt | Use the separate robots.txt generator, then verify once live | Yes, test rules before they go live |
| Advantage AI Crawler Check. Crawler coverage per run | 265 search, AI, SEO, social and other bots | A chosen user-agent in the robots.txt Tester; a list of known AI bots in the AI Bot Access Tester |
| Advantage AI Crawler Check. Purpose and tier labels for each bot | Yes, 8 categories and 6 tiers | Not its focus |
| Comparable. Status code and content checks | Yes, including firewall and challenge detection | Yes, the AI Bot Access Tester checks robots.txt, status code and content |
| Advantage AI Crawler Check. Overall score and GEO audit | 0 to 100 AI Visibility Score plus 42 GEO checks | Not offered |
| Advantage TechnicalSEO.com robots.txt tools. Wider free toolset | AI crawler, GEO and robots.txt tools | Broad free SEO suite: fetch and render, hreflang, schema generator, SERP simulator and more |
Dot colour shows which tool has the edge on that row: AI Crawler Check, TechnicalSEO.com robots.txt tools, comparable.
Two free tools with different centres of gravity
TechnicalSEO.com has offered free technical SEO utilities for years, and its robots.txt Tester is one many practitioners keep bookmarked. It is built around a precise question: is this URL blocked, and how? It can also tell you whether the resources a page needs, such as stylesheets and scripts, are disallowed, which matters because a crawler that cannot load them may not render the page properly. The suite now includes an AI Bot Access Tester as well, which checks robots.txt, the status code and the content returned for each URL against known AI bots.
AI Crawler Check starts from the opposite end. Its question is which crawlers lose this site, and what does that cost me? It evaluates every bot in our database, explains which robots.txt group decided each result, labels each bot by purpose, and rolls the result into a single AI Visibility Score you can track over time.
Where TechnicalSEO.com is the better pick
- Resource-level checks. If a template renders blank for a crawler, the cause is often a disallowed script or stylesheet folder. Their tester surfaces that directly; ours does not test individual resources.
- Trying rules before publishing. Testing an edited file is fast and safe there. We recommend writing the rule with our robots.txt generator, but we verify only the live file.
- The wider free toolkit. Fetch and render, hreflang testing, a schema generator and more sit one click away. If those are part of your routine, staying in one suite is convenient.
Where the AI view adds something
A blocked or allowed verdict is only half the answer for AI visibility. The other half is which bot, and what it does. Blocking a training crawler is a licensing decision many publishers make on purpose. Blocking a live retrieval crawler removes you from AI answers the moment a user asks. Blocking a user-triggered assistant can stop a customer's own request to read your page. Those three outcomes look identical in a simple pass or fail list.
Our report separates them, weights them by importance and turns the result into one number. That makes it easier to explain the outcome to a client or manager, and to show improvement after a fix. It also connects each result to a profile page in our bot directory, so the next question, "what is this bot and who runs it?", has an answer one click away.
A practical way to use both
- Run the AI crawler tester on your homepage and main templates to see the full crawler matrix and score.
- For any template that looks broken to crawlers, use the TechnicalSEO.com tester to check whether its resources are disallowed.
- Draft the change and test it there, or write it with our generator.
- Publish, then rerun our check to confirm the live result, including at the firewall.
Three questions, three tools
Most robots.txt problems start with one of three questions, and each points to a different kind of tool:
- "Is this exact URL blocked for this crawler?" A single-URL tester answers this precisely. TechnicalSEO.com is a good fit, and Google's URL Inspection tool covers Googlebot specifically.
- "Which crawlers can read my site at all?" This needs a matrix of crawlers against one URL. That is what AI Crawler Check produces, along with the reason each verdict was reached.
- "Which of my thousands of URLs are affected?" This needs a full site crawl as one user-agent, which is the job of a desktop crawler such as Screaming Frog.
Choosing the tool that matches the question saves time and avoids false confidence. A single-URL test that passes does not prove every crawler is welcome, and a crawler matrix for the homepage does not prove every deep URL is reachable. Use the overview to find where to look, then the precise tool to confirm.
Why we check raw HTML as well as robots.txt
An allowed URL is only useful if the crawler finds content when it arrives. Many AI crawlers fetch the raw HTML and do not run JavaScript. If a page builds its text in the browser, those crawlers see an empty shell even though robots.txt says yes. That is why our audit looks at what the raw response contains, not only at the rules. It turns "allowed" into "allowed and readable", which is the result that actually leads to citations.
Frequently asked questions
Is the TechnicalSEO.com robots.txt tester free?
Does TechnicalSEO.com check AI crawlers?
Why would page resources matter for AI crawlers?
Which tool should I use first?
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