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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteA scraping feasibility checker can tell you whether a crawler’s rules in robots.txt appear to allow a particular path for a particular user-agent, and whether the policy could be fetched and interpreted reliably. It cannot establish that scraping is legally authorized or guarantee that a crawl will work. Robots rules are not access authorization, as IETF RFC 9309 expressly states.
What a scraping feasibility checker can—and cannot—tell you
A responsible check is a narrow technical assessment, not a yes-or-no clearance for scraping. It should report the target’s applicable robots policy, the crawler identity and URL path evaluated, and any uncertainty caused by scope, retrieval, freshness, redirects, or rule interpretation.
- It can report whether the fetched robots.txt rules appear to allow or disallow a specified crawler identity from a specified path.
- It can report whether the policy was retrieved successfully, when it was retrieved, and how the checker handled errors and rule matching.
- It cannot establish legal permission, a right to use or republish data, or compliance with terms, privacy obligations, copyright, or jurisdiction-specific law.
- It cannot guarantee the site will serve the requested pages, that the content can be parsed, or that the site will not apply other access controls.
RFC 9309 describes robots.txt as rules crawlers are requested to honor and says, “These rules are not a form of access authorization.” An “allowed” result therefore means only that the relevant robots policy does not disallow the tested request under the checker’s stated interpretation. It is not proof that you may scrape the site.
What to check before calling a crawl feasible
1. Match the exact service scope
Robots.txt belongs at the top-level path of the applicable service—for example, https://example.com/robots.txt. The protocol, host, and port matter. Google’s documentation says a robots.txt file applies only to its host, protocol, and port; a policy at one subdomain or scheme does not automatically govern another. A policy fetched from https://www.example.com/robots.txt should not be treated as the policy for https://example.com/ or http://www.example.com/ without checking those services separately.
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Start from the exact page URL you plan to request. Identify its scheme, hostname, and port, then fetch robots.txt at that service’s root. Record the final URL if retrieval redirects, rather than quietly substituting a policy from a different host.
2. Evaluate the crawler identity and requested path
Robots rules are organized into user-agent groups and apply to paths. A checker should state the user-agent string or token it evaluated and the exact path tested; a result without those inputs is difficult to reproduce. Under RFC 9309, the most specific matching rule is used. A path-level assessment should therefore consider applicable Allow and Disallow rules rather than treating the mere existence of a robots file as a site-wide decision.
Crawler implementations do not necessarily interpret every extension identically. Google documents its supported robots.txt fields and says crawl-delay is not among them. Do not assume a vendor-specific directive is universal: a checker should name the interpretation profile it uses, especially if its answer differs from a particular crawler’s behavior.
3. Treat retrieval status as part of the result
A fetch failure is not the same thing as an explicit allow or disallow. RFC 9309 distinguishes unavailable client responses from unreachable server or network failures, and its baseline treatment differs by case. Google also publishes its own status-code handling. A useful result should preserve the HTTP status, redirect outcome, and retrieval error, then say which protocol or crawler-specific behavior it applied. It should not present all errors as permission to crawl or as a definitive block.
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4. Check freshness and save evidence
Record when the file was fetched and, ideally, retain the response body and final URL. RFC 9309 says a cached robots.txt generally should not be used for more than 24 hours unless the file is unreachable. Google says its crawlers generally cache robots.txt for up to 24 hours and may cache it longer when refresh is not possible. These are protocol and Google-crawler qualifications, not a guarantee that every website or checker refreshes on that schedule.
A reproducible check should include the target origin, robots.txt URL, requested path, user-agent, fetch timestamp, HTTP status, and rule that determined the result. Without those details, a displayed “allowed” or “blocked” label may be impossible to audit after the site changes its policy.
A practical do-it-yourself check
The following workflow is illustrative; it does not report a live check of any particular site. Replace the example origin, page path, and user-agent with the values relevant to your crawler. Fetching and reading the file is only the first part: you still need a standards-aware matcher to evaluate group selection and the most specific applicable path rule.
- Fix the request you intend to make. Write down the full page URL, the exact path (including relevant query handling for your crawler), and the user-agent your scraper will send.
- Derive the robots URL from that same origin. Keep scheme, host, and port identical; request the root-level
/robots.txt. - Fetch the response and preserve metadata. Note the timestamp, status code, redirects, and final URL. Do not convert a network failure, timeout, or unexpected response into an “allowed” result.
- Apply the intended crawler’s rules. Match the applicable user-agent group and compare matching
AllowandDisallowrules according to RFC 9309, or clearly identify a vendor-specific interpretation when that is what matters. - Report a qualified outcome. Use labels such as “not disallowed by the fetched policy under this interpretation,” “disallowed,” or “indeterminate—policy unavailable/ambiguous.” Keep technical policy separate from legal review and operational access checks.
For a simple retrieval using a shell, curl -i --max-redirs 5 https://example.com/robots.txt shows response headers and body while following a limited number of redirects. This is not a complete feasibility checker: it does not by itself select the applicable group, evaluate path specificity, decide how a failed fetch should be treated, or establish permission. Avoid using a command that hides status and redirects if you need an auditable result.
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| Observed result | What you can conclude | What you still cannot conclude |
|---|---|---|
| A matching rule disallows the tested path | The path is disallowed for the evaluated crawler identity under the stated rules. | Whether another user-agent, path, service origin, or crawler implementation gets the same result. |
| No applicable disallow rule is found | The fetched policy does not disallow the tested request under the checker’s interpretation. | Legal authorization, absence of terms restrictions, access availability, or permission to reuse the content. |
| Robots file is unavailable or fetch fails | The policy could not be assessed from that retrieval; report the error and the handling rule used. | That the site permits scraping. RFC 9309 and individual crawler policies distinguish failure cases. |
| Policy is stale, redirected unexpectedly, or interpretation differs | The result needs qualification or another fetch/matcher before relying on it. | That a cached or cross-origin policy reflects the current target service. |
Legal, privacy, and operational checks remain separate
Even a technically clear robots result answers only the crawler-policy question. The target site’s terms, your authorization, the kind of data collected, your purpose, privacy and copyright considerations, and the relevant jurisdiction may change what is appropriate or lawful. Those details cannot be resolved by a robots.txt fetch alone.
The European Data Protection Board’s page for Guidelines 03/2026 on web scraping in the context of generative AI describes a draft guidance consultation, with feedback open through October 30, 2026. It is draft material in consultation, not final guidance, and its stated context is generative AI; do not treat it as a universal legal ruling for every scrape.
Common feasibility-check failures and fixes
- Checking the wrong robots.txt: The page is on a different scheme, subdomain, or port from the file you fetched. Derive the robots URL from the exact target origin and check each origin independently.
- Reporting a site-wide answer from one path: A robots decision is tied to a user-agent and path. Re-run the matcher for every path pattern or endpoint your crawler intends to request.
- Treating a timeout or server failure as permission: Keep the result indeterminate, retry with a reasonable timeout, and report the failure-handling model instead of inventing an allow verdict.
- Using a stale cached copy: Fetch again and attach a timestamp; disclose when the file could not be refreshed. RFC 9309’s general 24-hour cache guidance has an unreachable-file exception.
- Misreading a vendor directive: Identify the crawler profile. For example, Google says it does not support
crawl-delay; do not assume another parser’s behavior matches Google’s. - Assuming an allowed result means a scrape will succeed: Robots.txt does not guarantee page availability or successful parsing. Treat bot checks, authentication, network failures, and content changes as separate operational conditions, and do not attempt to bypass controls without authorization.
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If your immediate task is capturing a page as an image or PDF—not deciding whether a crawl is authorized—ScreenshotNeo provides a website screenshot API and MCP server. A single GET request can return a PNG, JPEG, WebP, or PDF. It is not a robots-policy or legal-permission checker.
One-call cURL example (replace the target URL and API key):
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curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://example.com -o shot.webpSee the ScreenshotNeo documentation for API details. Its clean-shot flow accepts cookie or consent banners and removes more than 60 known consent platforms, newsletter popups, and chat widgets before capture; each step can be turned off. Bot checks/CAPTCHAs, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads, and cache hits are not billed, and responses identify the page verdict and billing status. Its MCP server exposes screenshot and page-information tools for AI agents. The free plan includes 1,000 screenshots per month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000. These capture features do not override a site’s access rules or grant permission to scrape.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does robots.txt legally allow me to scrape a website?
No. It reports crawler rules, not legal authorization. Check applicable terms, authorization, data-use obligations, and law separately.
Does one robots.txt file apply to every subdomain?
No. Scope is tied to the service origin, including its host, protocol, and port; check the origin serving the target page.
What does an “indeterminate” result mean?
It means the checker could not reliably assess the applicable policy, for example because retrieval failed or the policy’s scope or interpretation was unclear.
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