QuillBot user agent
Operated by QuillBot
QuillBot is a user agent reported for QuillBot's AI writing and detection tools.
The QuillBot bot at a glance
- QuillBot is operated by QuillBot and fetches a page when a person asks an AI assistant about it or shares its link, and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for QuillBot is QuillBot.
- Blocking an AI assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings.
- QuillBot robots.txt support: Not documented.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is QuillBot?
QuillBot can fetch web pages for its writing, summarizing and AI detection features.
QuillBot has not published a crawler page.
Should you block QuillBot?
Blocking QuillBot 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 assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking stops the assistant from reading your page when a user asks about it or pastes your link, so its answer falls back to other sources. |
| Follows robots.txt | Not documented |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow QuillBot
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 QuillBot is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop QuillBot, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block QuillBot
User-agent: QuillBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow QuillBot
User-agent: QuillBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep QuillBot out of private areas only
User-agent: QuillBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to QuillBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(QuillBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to QuillBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (QuillBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "QuillBot")How to verify real QuillBot traffic
QuillBot publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for QuillBot, 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 QuillBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts QuillBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "QuillBot" 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.
QuillBot FAQ
QuillBot uses the robots.txt token "QuillBot". QuillBot does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
QuillBot has not documented how QuillBot treats robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule and back it with a server rule if the traffic matters to you.
Blocking an AI assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings. Blocking stops the assistant from reading your page when a user asks about it or pastes your link, so its answer falls back to other sources.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: QuillBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. QuillBot publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for QuillBot, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "QuillBot", for example with: grep -i "QuillBot" 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.
