AgentDrives

Do bot checks stop AI agents?

Our agent signs every request with Web Bot Auth. Bot checks still stopped it at most products where it met one.

Bot checks1 Oct 2026 to 1 Nov 2026

115 of 201products stopped our signed agent with a bot check on a way in16 of 115Our agent still got in another way29 of 201A bot check let it through

Our drives 1 Oct 2026 to 1 Nov 2026Every bot check, product by productJSONMarkdown

What we found.

38%, 6 of 16: 6 of 16 sign-up pages that stopped an unsigned agent opened for the same agent signed.

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Bot checks that stopped our signed agent, by vendor. Google reCAPTCHA: 51 of 68, Cloudflare: 38 of 41, hCaptcha: 12 of 15, Arkose Labs: 5 of 5, The product's own check: 3 of 5, ALTCHA: 1 of 3, Unnamed bot checks: 0 of 3, DataDome: 2 of 2, Akamai Bot Manager: 1 of 1, Castle: 1 of 1, HUMAN Security: 1 of 1, Stytch device fingerprinting: 1 of 1, Friendly Captcha: 0 of 1.

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57%, 109 of 191: Stopped by a bot check.

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67%, 2 of 3: 2 of 3 Cloudflare challenge rules let our signed agent through on our own site.

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77%, 10 of 13: Opened for a signed agent.

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Everything on Bot checks.

Research and data 5

  1. Does signing your agent open the door?203 sign-up pages, signed and unsigned. 6 of the 16 sign-up pages that stopped an unsigned agent opened for the same agent signed.
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  1. Bot checks and AI agents: who lets a signed agent inA bot check stood in our signed agent's way at 143 products and let it through at 30.
  2. Which bot checks stopped our AI agent? 109 of 191 productsSome bot checks put a challenge on the page that a person could clear; others refused our agent with nothing shown, so there was nothing to hand over.Numbers: 191 products, 1–29 Oct 2026
  3. What changes when Cloudflare lists an AI agentAfter Cloudflare listed our agent, we drove again the 11 products its check had stopped: 5 got further.
  4. Do signed AI agents get past bot checks?A challenge on the sign-up form stopped our signed agent at 38 of 94 products where a bot check stopped it.Numbers: 151 products, 1–24 Oct 2026

News 2

  1. AWS now lists DataDome and F5 for Web Bot AuthAWS lists DataDome and F5 for its signed agents. Cloudflare stopped our signed, unverified agent at 34 of 34 products where it met it.Numbers: 148 products, 1–22 Oct 2026
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  1. Cloudflare starts scoring how its listed bots behaveCloudflare says it rates Verified bots internally on robots.txt and HTTP 429s. It stopped our signed agent at 33 of 33 products where it met it.Numbers: 140 products, 1–18 Oct 2026

Protocols and specs 3

  1. robots.txt for AI agentsThe file that tells crawlers and agents which pages to leave alone.20 of 201 products we drove offer it
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  1. Signed agentsAgents a bot-check vendor has verified, which a site can let through.8 of 10 products we drove offer it
  2. Web Bot AuthAn agent signs each request; a site's bot check can verify who sent it.29 of 201 products we drove offer it

Fix guides 1

  1. Let signed AI agents past your bot checkThe setting for Cloudflare, Vercel, Akamai, DataDome and HUMAN, and what to do about a check on the form.115 of 201 products where a bot check stopped our signed agent

The products, pass and stop.

Products whose bot check let our signed agent through. 29

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Products where a bot check kept it out. 99

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See where an agent stops in yours.

Free: what an agent finds on your site, any wall in its way and how many things to fix.