Bravebot user agent
Operated by Brave
Bravebot is the user agent reported for Brave Search's crawler, which builds Brave's independent search index.
The Bravebot bot at a glance
- Bravebot is operated by Brave and indexes web pages so an AI search product can show and cite them in answers, and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- The robots.txt token for Bravebot is Bravebot.
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- Bravebot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Bravebot?
Brave Search uses its own index, which also feeds AI answers and the Brave Search API used by AI tools.
Brave says its crawler will not crawl a page that is not crawlable by Googlebot.
Should you block Bravebot?
Allow Bravebot unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow Bravebot
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token Bravebot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Bravebot
User-agent: Bravebot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Bravebot
User-agent: Bravebot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Bravebot out of private areas only
User-agent: Bravebot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Bravebot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Bravebot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Bravebot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Bravebot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Bravebot")How to verify real Bravebot traffic
Brave publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Bravebot, so the user agent cannot be verified. Anyone can send the same string. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
How to find Bravebot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Bravebot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Bravebot" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Bravebot FAQ
Bravebot uses the robots.txt token "Bravebot". Brave does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Brave states that Bravebot follows robots.txt rules written for the "Bravebot" token.
Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Bravebot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Brave publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Bravebot, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Bravebot", for example with: grep -i "Bravebot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Public bot registry. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
