Does pixabay.com block AI crawlers?

Can AI assistants cite pixabay.com?

• ChatGPT search: its search crawlers may read the site
• Claude: its search crawlers may read the site
• Perplexity: its search crawlers may read the site

pixabay.com opts out of AI training by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Apple, Common Crawl, ByteDance. Training crawlers and answer crawlers are separate: blocking training doesn't by itself remove a site from AI answers.

AI crawler access, bot by bot

How pixabay.com compares

• 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; pixabay.com is one of them.
• 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; pixabay.com is one of them.
• 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; pixabay.com does not.
• Among 206 sites of similar popularity, 29% block at least one AI crawler.

The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers

User-agent: *
Allow: /api/docs/
Allow: /static/*.*
Allow: /*/search/forum/
Allow: /*/search/feeds/
Allow: /*/search/like/
Allow: /*/search/bootstrap/
Disallow: *?*orientation=*
Disallow: *?*manual_search=*
Disallow: *?*min_width=*
Disallow: *?*min_height=*
Disallow: *?*date=*
Disallow: *?*colors=*
Disallow: *?*order=*
Disallow: *?*animation=*
Disallow: *?*resolution_hd=*
Disallow: *?*genre=*
Disallow: *?*mood=*
Disallow: *?*movement=*
Disallow: *?*theme=*
Disallow: *?*cat=*
Disallow: *?*layout=*
Disallow: *?*per_page=*
Disallow: *?*content_type=*
Disallow: *?*vertex_count=*
Disallow: *?*with_animations=*
Disallow: *?*duration=*
Disallow: *?*spell_check=*
Disallow: /*ｃｏｍ
Disallow: /*ｖｉｐ
Disallow: /*ｃｃ
Disallow: /*.com
Disallow: /*.vip
Disallow: /*.cc
Disallow: /*７
Disallow: /*６
Disallow: /*２
Disallow: /*１
Disallow: /*０
Disallow: /*８
Disallow: /*５

User-agent: 008
User-agent: AhrefsBot
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
User-agent: Bytespider
User-agent: CCBot
User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: dotbot
User-agent: Google-Extended
User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: linguatools
User-agent: MJ12bot
User-agent: Ocelli
User-agent: Riddlerbot
User-agent: ShopWiki
User-agent: sistrix
User-agent: sitebot
User-agent: WBSearchBot
User-agent: www.integromedb.org/Crawler
Disallow: /

Excerpt: only groups for all user-agents (*) or named AI crawlers, up to 40 rules per group.

Sites with a similar AI policy

• aol.com · 5 blocked
• businessinsider.com · 3 blocked
• goodreads.com · 2 blocked
• go.com · 2 blocked
• globo.com · 3 blocked
• scribd.com · 3 blocked
• behance.net · 7 blocked
• calendly.com · 1 blocked

All sites that are “blocks ai training, allows ai answers” →