Does canva.com block AI crawlers?
canva.com blocks 8 of 17 AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, Bytespider, Applebot-Extended, Meta-ExternalAgent, Diffbot and Timpibot) and serves a bot challenge to 9, and allows 0 (checked 2026-10-01).
This is the deliberate split: training crawlers are opted out, while the retrieval crawlers that fetch pages to cite them in ChatGPT search, Claude and Perplexity answers can still reach it.
Every crawler we tested
| Crawler | Used for | Verdict | What we saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPTBot OpenAI | ChatGPT (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| OAI-SearchBot OpenAI | ChatGPT search (retrieval) | Challenged | Challenged: robots.txt permits it, but the fetch got a bot challenge page instead of the content. |
| ChatGPT-User OpenAI | ChatGPT (retrieval) | Challenged | Challenged: robots.txt permits it, but the fetch got a bot challenge page instead of the content. |
| ClaudeBot Anthropic | Claude (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Claude-SearchBot Anthropic | Claude search (retrieval) | Challenged | Challenged: robots.txt permits it, but the fetch got a bot challenge page instead of the content. |
| Claude-User Anthropic | Claude (retrieval) | Challenged | Challenged: robots.txt permits it, but the fetch got a bot challenge page instead of the content. |
| Google-Extended Google | Gemini (training) | Challenged | Challenged: robots.txt permits it, but the fetch got a bot challenge page instead of the content. |
| PerplexityBot Perplexity | Perplexity (retrieval) | Challenged | Challenged: robots.txt permits it, but the fetch got a bot challenge page instead of the content. |
| Perplexity-User Perplexity | Perplexity (retrieval) | Challenged | Challenged: robots.txt permits it, but the fetch got a bot challenge page instead of the content. |
| CCBot Common Crawl | Common Crawl (research) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Bytespider ByteDance | ByteDance (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Applebot-Extended Apple | Apple Intelligence (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Meta-ExternalAgent Meta | Meta AI (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Amazonbot Amazon | Alexa (training) | Challenged | Challenged: robots.txt permits it, but the fetch got a bot challenge page instead of the content. |
| cohere-ai Cohere | Cohere (retrieval) | Challenged | Challenged: robots.txt permits it, but the fetch got a bot challenge page instead of the content. |
| Diffbot Diffbot | Diffbot (research) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Timpibot Timpi | Timpi (research) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
How that compares
- GPTBot is blocked by 38 of the 239 sites on these pages (15.9%).
- ClaudeBot is blocked by 36 of the 240 sites on these pages (15%).
- CCBot is blocked by 37 of the 240 sites on these pages (15.4%).
- Bytespider is blocked by 44 of the 238 sites on these pages (18.5%).
How this was measured
We read canva.com’s robots.txt, resolved it with an RFC 9309 matcher for each crawler’s product token, then fetched the homepage once as each crawler. A 403 or a challenge page is a block even when robots.txt allows the crawler; a timeout or rate limit is “not established”, never a block. One probe, from one location, on 2026-10-01, so a rule changed since then is not reflected here. Full methodology.
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Other sites
- sundaysky.com — blocks none of 17
- mgid.com — blocks none of 17
- goguardian.com — blocks none of 17
- forter.com — blocks 4 of 17
- singular.net — blocks none of 17
- claude.ai — blocks 4 of 17