Meta-ExternalAgent

Meta's crawler that collects web pages to train AI models.

In robots.txt: User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent

Named by9.0%of readable robots.txt files on the top 1M (54,207 of 600,979)

Of those, block it76.5%shut it out of the whole site (41,476 of 54,207)

Same sites, since CC-MAIN-2026-34−0.6 ptsshare of the same 394,690 sites that block it by name: 8.4% → 7.8%

Via Cloudflare's file65.0%of its blocks come from Cloudflare's ready-made robots.txt (26,949 of 41,476)Cloudflare stopped adding that file on 16 September 2026, so this month mixes before and after. What happened

76.5%

12.5%

10.9%

Block the whole site: 41,476Block some paths: 6,798Name it but allow it: 5,933

Every robots.txt file on the top 1M that names Meta-ExternalAgent, by what the rules that apply to it say.

Meta's other bots

Sites often treat one company's bots differently, depending on what each is for.

Bot	Purpose	Files naming it	Of those, block it
facebookbot	Collects pages to train AI	16,505	60.2%
Meta-ExternalFetcher	Fetches a page for a chatbot user	7,983	51.6%

Who does what

The highest-ranked sites on the top million in each group. Click one to see its whole robots.txt verdict.

Block it

Block some paths

Name it and allow it

Lists skip sites we don't showcase (adult content).

What this means for you: blocking Meta-ExternalAgent asks Meta not to collect your pages for AI training from now on. robots.txt only affects future visits, and it doesn't touch Meta's other bots. Decide each bot on what it's for, not who runs it.