Cloudflare-AutoRAG user agent
Operated by Cloudflare
Cloudflare-AutoRAG is the crawler reported for Cloudflare AI Search (formerly AutoRAG), which indexes websites for customers' AI search apps.
The Cloudflare-AutoRAG bot at a glance
- Cloudflare-AutoRAG is operated by Cloudflare and indexes web pages so an AI search product can show and cite them in answers, and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for Cloudflare-AutoRAG is Cloudflare-AutoRAG.
- Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- Cloudflare-AutoRAG robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is Cloudflare-AutoRAG?
Cloudflare customers use AI Search to build retrieval-augmented chat and search over website content.
Public registries report that it follows robots.txt.
Should you block Cloudflare-AutoRAG?
Blocking Cloudflare-AutoRAG 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 search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking removes your pages from that AI search index, so its answers can no longer cite or link to your website. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow Cloudflare-AutoRAG
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 Cloudflare-AutoRAG is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Cloudflare-AutoRAG
User-agent: Cloudflare-AutoRAG
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Cloudflare-AutoRAG
User-agent: Cloudflare-AutoRAG
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Cloudflare-AutoRAG out of private areas only
User-agent: Cloudflare-AutoRAG
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Cloudflare-AutoRAG
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Cloudflare\-AutoRAG)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Cloudflare-AutoRAG
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Cloudflare\-AutoRAG) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Cloudflare-AutoRAG")How to verify real Cloudflare-AutoRAG traffic
Cloudflare publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Cloudflare-AutoRAG, 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 Cloudflare-AutoRAG in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Cloudflare-AutoRAG requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Cloudflare-AutoRAG" 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.
Cloudflare-AutoRAG FAQ
Cloudflare-AutoRAG uses the robots.txt token "Cloudflare-AutoRAG". Cloudflare does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Cloudflare states that Cloudflare-AutoRAG follows robots.txt rules written for the "Cloudflare-AutoRAG" token.
Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. Blocking removes your pages from that AI search index, so its answers can no longer cite or link to your website.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Cloudflare-AutoRAG" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Cloudflare publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Cloudflare-AutoRAG, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Cloudflare-AutoRAG", for example with: grep -i "Cloudflare-AutoRAG" 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.
