# robots.txt Analyzer - Parse Rules, Sitemaps & Crawl Blocks (`eliai/robots-txt-analyzer`) Actor

Fetches and parses a site's robots.txt from one site URL or a bulk list. Returns every user-agent group with its Allow and Disallow rules, crawl delays, declared sitemap URLs, whether all crawlers are blocked and common mistakes. For SEO specialists and crawler developers.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/eliai/robots-txt-analyzer.md
- **Developed by:** [Broke to Built](https://apify.com/eliai) (community)
- **Categories:** SEO tools, Developer tools
- **Features:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 1 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $4.00 / 1,000 robots.txt scans

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## robots.txt Analyzer

**Send a site URL, get its robots.txt parsed into user-agent groups and allow/disallow rules, plus the sitemaps it declares and common mistakes.**

| You give it | You get back | You pay (Free plan) |
|---|---|---|
| One site URL or a list of up to 25 | Per site: robots.txt found yes/no, rule groups, sitemaps, blocks-all-crawlers flag, issues | **$0.02 per site** |

Pay per result only: no subscription, no start fee. Paid Apify plans get Store discounts on the price above.

#### Try it in one click

The input form is already filled in with this example. Press **Start** and you get the output below.

```json
{
  "url": "https://www.apify.com",
  "urls": []
}
```

Real output from that exact input (run on 2026-09-24; long arrays shortened to a few entries and long text cut for display):

```json
[
  {
    "url": "https://www.apify.com",
    "robotsUrl": "https://www.apify.com/robots.txt",
    "statusCode": 200,
    "hasRobots": true,
    "userAgentGroups": 1,
    "totalRules": 1,
    "sitemaps": [
      "https://apify.com/sitemap.xml"
    ],
    "blocksAllCrawlers": false,
    "groups": [
      {
        "agent": "*",
        "rules": [
          {
            "type": "allow",
            "path": "/"
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    "issues": [],
    "summary": "1 groups, 1 sitemap(s), 0 issue(s)"
  }
]
```

Parse and audit any site's `robots.txt` in one call — user-agent groups, allow/disallow rules, declared sitemaps, and common issues. No API key, pay per site.

**▶ Live on the Apify Store: https://apify.com/eliai/robots-txt-analyzer** — run it instantly, or call it as an agent tool via Apify MCP.

### What it does

- Fetches and parses `/robots.txt`
- Lists **user-agent groups** and their allow/disallow rules
- Extracts all **declared Sitemap** URLs
- Flags issues: **no sitemap declared**, **`Disallow: /` for `*`** (blocks the whole site), missing/HTML robots.txt

### Input

```json
{ "url": "https://example.com" }
```

or bulk:

```json
{ "urls": ["https://a.com", "https://b.com"], "maxUrls": 25 }
```

### Output (per site)

```json
{
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "robotsUrl": "https://example.com/robots.txt",
  "hasRobots": true,
  "userAgentGroups": 3,
  "totalRules": 12,
  "sitemaps": ["https://example.com/sitemap.xml"],
  "blocksAllCrawlers": false,
  "issues": [],
  "summary": "3 groups, 1 sitemap(s), 0 issue(s)"
}
```

### Use cases

SEO audits, crawl-control reviews, and catching accidental site-wide blocks — by hand or wired into an agent. Pairs with our [Sitemap Analyzer](https://apify.com/eliai/sitemap-analyzer) and [SEO & Tech Auditor](https://apify.com/eliai/website-seo-tech-auditor).

### Pricing

**$0.02 per site analyzed** — flat per robots.txt, billed as the `robots-analyzed` event. Bulk runs are capped by `maxUrls`, which is also your budget cap.

### Limits

- Default run settings: 256 MB memory, 600 s timeout. Change them per run under Options if a large input needs more.
- Time: the prefilled example finished in 2 s on 2026-10-31; run time grows with the number of inputs.

### FAQ

**How do I check if robots.txt is blocking my site from Google?** Run your domain — `blocksAllCrawlers` tells you instantly if a `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: *` is shutting out every crawler, the single most damaging robots.txt mistake.

**Does it find the sitemaps a site declares?** Yes — every `Sitemap:` line is extracted into the `sitemaps` array, which is also how you discover sitemaps that live at non-standard paths.

**What if the site has no robots.txt at all?** You get `hasRobots: false` with the issues list noting it. No robots.txt means crawlers assume everything is allowed — worth knowing either way.

**What does it flag as an issue?** No sitemap declared, `Disallow: /` for all user agents (blocks the whole site), and a missing robots.txt or one that serves HTML instead of plain text.

**Can I audit robots.txt for many sites at once?** Yes — pass an array in `urls` (capped by `maxUrls`) and get one record per site.

### Related actors

Blocking a URL that redirects hides the destination from crawlers entirely — [Redirect Chain Checker](https://apify.com/eliai/redirect-chain-checker) traces every hop so you know what is on the other side of the rule. See also [Sitemap Analyzer](https://apify.com/eliai/sitemap-analyzer) and [Website SEO Tech Auditor](https://apify.com/eliai/website-seo-tech-auditor).

### For AI agents

This Actor is built to be called by software, not just by people.

- **Mount it directly as an MCP tool** — no Store search, no ranking, just this one tool:
  `https://mcp.apify.com/?actors=eliai/robots-txt-analyzer`
- **Or call it over HTTP** and get the results in the same request:
  `POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/eliai~robots-txt-analyzer/run-sync-get-dataset-items`
- **Costs are predictable before you call.** Pricing is pay-per-event (see Pricing above), so an agent can budget a run in advance instead of discovering the bill afterwards.
- **Send only the field you mean.** If you pass the bulk field, it is used on its own; the single-value field is a fallback, never merged into your request. You are charged for the items you sent and nothing else.

### Changelog

- 2026-11-01: Page text only: a Limits section. Code, output and price are unchanged.
- 2026-09-24: New summary at the top of this page: what you send, what you get, the price, and a real output from the prefilled example.

# Actor input Schema

## `url` (type: `string`):

A site URL — its /robots.txt is fetched and parsed

## `urls` (type: `array`):

Multiple sites to analyze

## `maxUrls` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of sites processed in one run; anything beyond it is skipped, so this also caps the cost.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "url": "https://www.apify.com",
  "urls": [],
  "maxUrls": 25
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Every item this run produced. Export as JSON, CSV or Excel from the dataset view.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "url": "https://www.apify.com",
    "urls": []
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("eliai/robots-txt-analyzer").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "url": "https://www.apify.com",
    "urls": [],
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("eliai/robots-txt-analyzer").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "url": "https://www.apify.com",
  "urls": []
}' |
apify call eliai/robots-txt-analyzer --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,eliai/robots-txt-analyzer"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/3AVIrjBIxPePfQasA/builds/7pQRKug850bApza45/openapi.json