Claude-Code
Claude-Code is an AI coding tool operated by Anthropic. Developers use it to write, debug, or understand code, and it visits the web to fetch documentation, package metadata, code samples, or related references.
Visits are user-initiated. A developer types a question or pastes a URL and Claude-Code retrieves it on their behalf. You will not see scheduled crawling, just bursts that follow user activity.
Allowing this agent makes your developer documentation available to a much larger audience than just the people who land on your site directly. Your docs end up inside the IDE.
See Claude-Code on your own site
Match the User-Agent header on incoming requests against the pattern below.
regex
Verify by IP
For higher confidence, also verify the source IP against the operator's published ranges. UA strings can be spoofed; IP ownership is harder to fake.
Renders JavaScript
Sometimes
IP verification
Published IP ranges
Crawl frequency
Burst, user-driven
Honors robots.txt
Yes
Honors Crawl-delay
Varies
Anthropic runs 12 bots in total. Each one is a separate user-agent so you can allow or block them independently.
Live-Fetch AI
4Training Crawler
2Agentic Browser
2Agentic Commerce
2AI Coding Tool
1- Claude-CodeYou are here
AI Search Index
1Should I let Claude-Code through?
In most cases, yes. Lets your developer documentation reach a much larger audience inside the IDE. If volume gets noisy, rate-limit it before you block it outright.
Does blocking Claude-Code affect my Google rankings?
No. Claude-Code fetches a page only when a user is actively asking Anthropic a question. It has nothing to do with how Google or Bing rank you. The cost of blocking is that Anthropic can't quote your content in its answer.
How do I confirm a request is really from Claude-Code?
Two checks. The User-Agent header should match a known Claude-Code string, and the request's source IP should fall inside Anthropic's published ranges. The User-Agent alone is trivially spoofable, so the IP check is what gives you confidence. Anthropic publishes the ranges so you can validate at the CDN or edge.
Does a Claude-Code visit count as a real user visit?
Sort of. There is a human asking Anthropic a question on the other end, but they never load your page in their own browser. They see whatever Anthropic quotes back, usually a snippet plus a citation link. Count it as upstream attention rather than as a session.
How is Claude-Code different from Anthropic's other bots?
Anthropic splits work across multiple user-agents so site owners can decide on each one independently. Training crawlers, live-fetch agents, search indexers, and agentic browsers each get their own name. Worth scanning the rest of the Anthropic family above to see which ones actually matter for your site.
What's the cleanest way to control Claude-Code?
Two layers. Robots.txt for the polite crawlers that read it, and rules at your CDN or edge for the ones that don't. Rankly's Agent Experience handles both from a single config, so you can allow, block, rate-limit, or serve a stripped-down version per bot. Agent Analytics handles the observation half so you know which bots are actually worth a rule.
Verify everything above against the operator's own documentation.