Comparison
Metryn compared with free AI crawler checkers: what each one actually does
Tools read on 12 October 2026 · What is Metryn · For online stores
Several free tools check whether AI crawlers are allowed by your robots.txt. If that's all you need, one of them may be enough. This page puts them next to Metryn so you can pick, using only what each tool's own page states. The date they were read is at the top, because tool pages change.
Side by side
| Tool | What it checks | Price and account | Limits and caveats it states itself |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metryn | robots.txt rules for 10 tracked crawlers, indexability, sitemap, structured data and content clarity, as one score | Free scan, no account. Full report €5.99 one-time | Reads raw HTML and doesn't execute JavaScript. Doesn't predict rankings or citations. Its access probe is simulated |
| Backlinko robots.txt AI crawler checker | 12 checks on robots.txt: search and AI crawlers, sitemap references, crawl-delay, key URL crawlability and syntax | Free, no login | Three free checks per day |
| 365i AI Bot Checker | 14 AI crawlers: robots.txt, a live homepage request as each bot, and meta robots and X-Robots-Tag | Free, no sign-up | Results cached 15 minutes. Requests come from 365i's servers, so some security systems may reject them without it being a true block |
| GEO Toolbox AI crawler checker | 34 AI user-agents against robots.txt, with the Disallow line that blocks each | Free for single domains, no sign-up | robots.txt only. States it doesn't detect WAF, Cloudflare, rate-limit or 403 blocks |
| LLM Pulse robots.txt checker | robots.txt rules for AI and search crawlers, blocked paths, sitemap reference | Free, no account, but it asks for an email and subscribes you to its newsletter | Doesn't test whether pages can actually be crawled or rendered |
Where Metryn does more
- It looks beyond robots.txt: indexability signals, the sitemap, structured data and whether key content is in the HTML, combined in one score with the findings ranked.
- The method, the crawler list, each crawler's purpose and the date it was verified against its operator's documentation are public, and so are the limits of what it can verify.
- The full report is a one-time payment, with no subscription and no account.
Where the others are better
- Coverage of user-agents: Metryn tracks 10. The checkers above state 12 to 34.
- Live testing: 365i sends a real request as each bot and compares it with a browser request. Metryn's equivalent is a simulated probe and is labelled that way.
- Price: all four are free for what they do, and Metryn's full report is paid.
- Pinpointing the rule: GEO Toolbox shows the exact Disallow line responsible.
How to choose
If you just want to know whether your robots.txt blocks AI crawlers, use a free checker, and check a second one if the result matters, because they cover different lists. If you want to know whether the page itself can be fetched, indexed and read, and to get a prioritized list of what to fix in one report, that's what Metryn is for. They're not exclusive: robots.txt checkers are a good complement. Metryn also publishes its own free robots.txt checker and generator at /tools/ai-robots-txt, which reads one file and does nothing else.
Sources
- Backlinko: https://backlinko.com/tools/robots-txt-ai-crawler-checker (read 2026-10-12)
- 365i: https://www.365i.co.uk/tools/ai-bot-checker/ (read 2026-10-12)
- GEO Toolbox: https://geotoolbox.ai/tools/ai-crawler-checker (read 2026-10-12)
- LLM Pulse: https://llmpulse.ai/robots-txt-checker (read 2026-10-12)
- Metryn: https://getmetryn.com/methodology
See what a full scan shows
Paste a public address. The scan takes seconds and doesn't need an account.