FirecrawlAgent user agent
Operated by Firecrawl
FirecrawlAgent is the user agent of Firecrawl, a service that turns websites into structured data for AI applications.
The FirecrawlAgent bot at a glance
- FirecrawlAgent is operated by Firecrawl and loads web pages in a browser to complete tasks on behalf of a user, and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for FirecrawlAgent is FirecrawlAgent.
- Blocking an AI agent has no effect on search rankings.
- FirecrawlAgent robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is FirecrawlAgent?
Firecrawl customers point it at websites to extract content for LLM and AI agent pipelines.
Its traffic is driven by Firecrawl customers rather than by Firecrawl itself.
Should you block FirecrawlAgent?
Blocking FirecrawlAgent is a business decision: it protects your content but can lower how well AI products know your brand.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI agent has no effect on search rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking stops agents from completing tasks on your website for their users, which can cost bookings or sales that agents would have made. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow FirecrawlAgent
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 FirecrawlAgent is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block FirecrawlAgent
User-agent: FirecrawlAgent
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow FirecrawlAgent
User-agent: FirecrawlAgent
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep FirecrawlAgent out of private areas only
User-agent: FirecrawlAgent
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to FirecrawlAgent
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(FirecrawlAgent)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to FirecrawlAgent
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (FirecrawlAgent) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "FirecrawlAgent")How to verify real FirecrawlAgent traffic
Firecrawl publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for FirecrawlAgent, 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 FirecrawlAgent in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts FirecrawlAgent requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "FirecrawlAgent" 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.
FirecrawlAgent FAQ
FirecrawlAgent uses the robots.txt token "FirecrawlAgent". Firecrawl does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Firecrawl states that FirecrawlAgent follows robots.txt rules written for the "FirecrawlAgent" token.
Blocking an AI agent has no effect on search rankings. Blocking stops agents from completing tasks on your website for their users, which can cost bookings or sales that agents would have made.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: FirecrawlAgent" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Firecrawl publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for FirecrawlAgent, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "FirecrawlAgent", for example with: grep -i "FirecrawlAgent" 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.
