Crawler directory · User-triggered AI fetcher

Claude-User: user agent, robots.txt rules, and how to allow or block it

Claude-User fetches a page when a Claude user asks a question that needs it or shares a link. Blocking it means Claude cannot read your page on a user’s behalf.

Operator: Anthropic
Feeds: Claude live browsing
Type: User-triggered AI fetcher
robots.txt token: Claude-User

Claude-User user agent

Match on the token Claude-User (case-insensitive) in the User-Agent header. In your access logs, filter with grep -i "Claude-User" access.log.

Official documentation: support.anthropic.com. Vendors change their crawlers, so check it for the current details.

Should you allow or block Claude-User?

Blocking stops the assistant reading your page when a person asks it to. That person then gets no answer from your site, so most sites that want AI visibility leave it allowed.

robots.txt rules for Claude-User

Put these in the robots.txt at the root of your domain.

Block Claude-User

User-agent: Claude-User
Disallow: /

Explicitly allow Claude-User

User-agent: Claude-User
Allow: /

Block only part of your site

User-agent: Claude-User
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /

robots.txt states your policy; it does not enforce it. A CDN or firewall can block a bot your robots.txt allows, which is why it is worth testing rather than assuming.

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Questions, answered

What is Claude-User?+

Claude-User fetches a page when a Claude user asks a question that needs it or shares a link. Blocking it means Claude cannot read your page on a user’s behalf.

How do I block Claude-User in robots.txt?+

Add these two lines to the robots.txt at the root of your domain: User-agent: Claude-User Disallow: / User-agent tokens are matched case-insensitively. The rule applies from the crawler's next visit; it does not delete anything already collected.

Will blocking Claude-User affect my Google rankings?+

No. Claude-User is separate from Googlebot, so blocking it does not change how Google Search indexes or ranks you. Blocking stops the assistant reading your page when a person asks it to. That person then gets no answer from your site, so most sites that want AI visibility leave it allowed.

Related crawlers

More on the trade-offs in the AI bot policies guide and the robots.txt guide.