Best AI Bot Checkers (2026)
If AI crawlers can't read your pages, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews can't cite you — no matter how good your content is. An AI bot checker reads your robots.txt and flags which AI bots you're allowing or blocking. The tools below are all free (one is usage-priced); we ranked them on bot coverage, accuracy, privacy, ease, and how honest they are about the one thing that matters most: allowing bots in is necessary, but not sufficient, for AI visibility.
Top pick — free, private & honest about results
Is My Brand In AI's AI Bot Checker is a free, no-signup tool that runs entirely in your browser, reads your site's robots.txt, and shows per-bot allow/block status for the six AI crawlers that matter most (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews). It is our top pick for transparency, privacy and honest GEO education — it states plainly that letting bots in is necessary but not sufficient for AI visibility. It checks fewer bots than BrandCited's ~64-agent sweep, but it covers the ones that actually move citations, cleanly. We rate it 4.6/5.
Widest coverage — ~64 AI bots
BrandCited's robots.txt Auditor is a free, no-signup tool that reads your site's robots.txt and reports allow/block status across roughly 64 AI search and training user-agents — far more than the six-engine checkers. Its edge is breadth: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google-Extended, Perplexity, Apple, Mistral, Meta, ByteDance, Yandex and the long tail, with copy-paste fix lines. It is run by BrandCited, whose paid product is a separate AI-visibility monitoring platform. Best when you need the widest possible bot coverage; if you only care about the six engines that move citations, a simpler tool is cleaner. We rate it 4.4/5.
Best AEO readiness score
xSeek's AI Robots.txt Checker is a free, no-signup tool that fetches your robots.txt and tests it against the 14 AI crawlers that matter in 2026 (ChatGPT/GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Gemini/Google-Extended and more), returning a weighted 0-100 AEO readiness score. Scans are ephemeral and fast. It's a clean, honest diagnostic and a lead-in to xSeek's paid AI-visibility platform. Reading robots.txt is necessary for AI visibility but not sufficient. We rate it 4.0/5.
Best for catching robots.txt errors
Hyperleap AI's Robots.txt Validator is a free, no-signup tool that does two jobs most rivals don't combine: it validates robots.txt syntax (flagging errors by severity) and reports whether major AI crawlers — GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended — are allowed or blocked. Paste a file or fetch by URL; email is optional. It's a top-of-funnel tool for Hyperleap's paid SMB chatbot platform ($40-200/mo), but the validator itself is genuinely free. Strong for catching a broken robots.txt, not just listing bot access. We rate it 4.0/5.
Best for developers & automation
The Apify Robots.txt AI Checker is an Apify Actor that parses robots.txt across many domains and reports whether AI crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, CCBot and Bytespider are allowed or blocked — with change detection over time. It's genuinely powerful for batch and automated audits, but it runs on Apify's platform (account + Actor run, usage-based pricing) rather than instantly in a browser. Best for developers; non-technical users checking one site are better served by an instant tool. We rate it 3.8/5.
Accurate (Google's parser), narrow scope
AIclicks' free Robots.txt Checker reads your live robots.txt and gives a per-crawler allowed/blocked verdict for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Perplexity-User and OAI-SearchBot alongside Googlebot and Bingbot, validating it with Google's open-source (RFC 9309) parser. It's free with no signup. Its companion AI Crawlability Checker covers a wider bot list (adding Google-Extended, CCBot, Applebot-Extended and more) by actually requesting each user-agent. Both are free lead-ins to aiclicks.io's paid AI-visibility platform. We rate it 3.8/5.
How it compares
| Tool | Best for | Bots checked | Price | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Is My Brand In AI | Fast, private check | 6 major engines | Free | 4.6 |
| BrandCited | Maximum coverage | ~64 agents | Free | 4.4 |
| xSeek | AEO readiness score | 14 crawlers | Free | 4.0 |
| Hyperleap AI | Syntax + bot check | 6 bots | Free | 4.0 |
| Apify Checker | Developers / automation | ~10 bots | Usage-priced | 3.8 |
| AIclicks | Google-parser accuracy | 4 (here) | Free | 3.8 |
How we picked
We weigh each tool on how many AI crawlers it checks, accuracy, ease of use (no signup), privacy (does it run in your browser or send your data to a server), and honesty about what a clean result really means. These are free tools — we earn no commission on any of them, and our top pick pays us nothing. We rank on usefulness, not payout.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI bot checker?
A free tool that reads your website's robots.txt and reports whether AI crawlers — like OpenAI's GPTBot, Anthropic's ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended — are allowed to access your pages. If they're blocked, the AI engines behind ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews can't read or cite your content, no matter how good it is.
How do I know if my site is blocking GPTBot or ClaudeBot?
Run your domain through any checker here — they fetch your robots.txt and show a per-bot allowed/blocked status in seconds. Is My Brand In AI does it free, with no signup, entirely in your browser. If a bot reads 'blocked', a Disallow rule in your robots.txt is shutting it out; BrandCited even outputs copy-paste lines to fix it.
Does allowing AI bots mean my brand will appear in AI answers?
No — and this is the most important caveat in the category. Allowing crawlers is necessary but not sufficient. Unblocking GPTBot only removes the barrier; whether an AI actually cites you depends on content quality and real brand mentions across the web. Treat a clean bot check as table stakes, not a finish line. Note too that robots.txt is only one layer — server, CDN or WAF rules (like a Cloudflare bot block) can shut crawlers out independently.
Are AI bot checkers free?
Most are completely free with no signup — Is My Brand In AI, BrandCited, xSeek, Hyperleap and AIclicks all run a free check (several double as lead-gen for paid GEO monitoring platforms). The exception is Apify's, which runs as a usage-priced Actor aimed at developers who want to automate or batch-check many domains.
Our top pick for checking AI bot access
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