In short. Use Cloudflare Radar for current verified-bot listings and AI Crawl Control to review crawler identities and activity on a site.
Definition: As of October 2026, Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control Bot reference lists selected crawlers with their operators, categories, detection identifiers, and user agents. It points to the Cloudflare Radar Bots Directory for the current list of verified bots, meaning bots approved through Cloudflare's verification process.
Key facts
- Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control overview documents monitoring crawler activity and setting individual access policies.
- The Bot reference directs readers to Radar for the current verified-bot list.
- Cloudflare's bot concepts documentation distinguishes Search, Agent, and Training behaviors; a bot can have multiple behaviors.
- The traffic analysis documentation describes a Crawlers tab with names, operators, request totals, and access settings.
Which reference should a website owner use?
The Cloudflare Radar Bots Directory is the public lookup destination linked from AI Crawl Control. Cloudflare's BotBase documentation explains that bots tracked in BotBase and selected metadata are publicly available through Radar. BotBase also provides a searchable directory inside the dashboard for Enterprise Bot Management customers.
The AI Crawl Control Bot reference table provides concrete examples: OpenAI's GPTBot has the category AI Crawler, ChatGPT-User has AI Assistant, and OAI-SearchBot has AI Search. A user agent is the identifying string a crawler presents with its requests. The table gives these strings for the examples:
GPTBot
ChatGPT-User
OAI-SearchBot
These names provide starting points for looking up individual crawlers and comparing their entries with observed traffic.
How do the category labels relate to current classifications?
Cloudflare's Verified bots documentation dates the newer taxonomy to July 1, 2026. Traditional search and AI search share the Search behavior. The AI Search category remains available for compatibility with existing rules, and new search crawlers receive the Search classification.
The bot concepts documentation defines the current AI-related behaviors:
| Behavior | Documented purpose |
|---|---|
| Search | Content collection or indexing for answering later questions. |
| Agent | Activity performed in real time on a person's behalf, including chat fetchers and browser agents. |
| Training | Content collection for training or fine-tuning a model. |
The same documentation permits multiple behaviors per bot. Reading both the individual crawler entry and its behavior labels helps distinguish an operator's different uses of website content.
How does the directory connect to a site's requests?
Cloudflare's Analyze AI traffic guide instructs account holders to select an account and domain, then open AI Crawl Control. The Crawlers tab's actions menu includes View on Cloudflare Radar and Copy User Agent. View Metrics filters analytics to the selected crawler.
The crawler management guide documents filtering by name, operator, or category. It also states that Free plan identification uses user-agent strings. This matters when comparing a recognized crawler name with activity attributed to that name on a particular site.
Related terms
- How do I enable Cloudflare AI Crawl Control?
- How do I allow one crawler in Cloudflare AI Crawl Control?
- GPTBot
- OAI-SearchBot
FAQ
Where should I check for a bot missing from the reference table?
Use Radar: Cloudflare's Bot reference describes its own table as a selection and links to the current verified-bot directory.
Do I need Enterprise Bot Management to consult Radar?
Cloudflare's BotBase documentation describes Radar's directory as public. The Enterprise Bot Management requirement applies to BotBase inside the dashboard.
Sources
- Cloudflare, "AI Crawl Control", updated 14 August 2026
- Cloudflare, "Bot reference", updated 23 April 2026
- Cloudflare, "BotBase", updated 8 October 2026
- Cloudflare, "Verified bots", updated 8 October 2026
- Cloudflare, "Bots", updated 1 July 2026
- Cloudflare, "Analyze AI traffic", updated 23 April 2026
- Cloudflare, "Manage AI crawlers", updated 28 July 2026
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