Skip to content
SPCXTools

Robots.txt Generator

Generate and download a custom robots.txt file to control search engine crawlers and block AI bots.

Runs locally — files never leave your device

Loading tool…

How to use Robots.txt Generator

  1. 1Choose a default policy to either allow or disallow all search engines from crawling your site.
  2. 2Add custom rules for specific user-agents and paths (e.g., disallow access to /admin/ or /private/).
  3. 3Set an optional crawl delay to prevent aggressive bots from overloading your server.
  4. 4Check the "Block AI crawlers" box to instantly add rules that prevent common AI bots from scraping your content.
  5. 5Enter your sitemap URLs, then copy the generated code or download the file directly to your device.

A fast, private robots.txt generator

Managing how search engines and web scrapers interact with your website is essential for SEO and server performance. This robots.txt generator provides a visual interface to build, manage, and export your site's crawler instructions without writing the syntax by hand.

Because the tool operates entirely within your browser, your site structure, private paths, and configurations remain completely confidential. Nothing you type into the generator is ever sent to a server. You get instant, live-updating output that you can copy or download immediately.

Key features and capabilities

Default Access Policies: Start by defining the baseline behavior for all bots. You can choose to allow everything (which is standard for most public websites) or disallow everything (useful for staging environments or private networks).

Custom Directives: Add specific rules targeting individual bots or paths. You can block all crawlers from accessing sensitive directories like /admin/ or /search, while allowing specific bots to access certain files.

Block AI Crawlers: With the rise of large language models, many website owners prefer not to have their content scraped for AI training. This tool includes a dedicated feature to block AI crawlers robots.txt rules. Checking a single box instantly adds Disallow: / directives for the most common AI bots, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, and Bytespider.

Crawl Delays: If your server struggles with heavy traffic from automated bots, you can set a crawl delay. This outputs a Crawl-delay directive, instructing bots to wait a specified number of seconds between requests.

Sitemap Integration: A robots.txt sitemap directive is the most efficient way to tell search engines where to find your XML sitemaps. You can paste multiple sitemap URLs (one per line), and the tool will properly format and append them to the bottom of your file.

How to create robots.txt files effectively

When you create robots.txt files, it is important to understand how crawlers read the instructions. The file is divided into blocks, each starting with a User-agent declaration followed by the rules that apply to it.

  1. Identify the User-agent: The user-agent is the name of the bot. Using an asterisk (*) applies the rule to all bots. If you want to target Google's image crawler specifically, you would use Googlebot-Image.
  2. Define the Path: Paths are relative to the root of your domain and must start with a forward slash (/). To block an entire directory, include the trailing slash (e.g., /private/). To block a specific file, include the extension (e.g., /data.csv).
  3. Order of Precedence: Most modern crawlers look for the most specific user-agent block that matches their name. If Googlebot visits your site, it will follow rules specifically under User-agent: Googlebot and ignore the User-agent: * block. This generator automatically organizes your rules by user-agent to ensure the output is clean and valid.

Understanding the limitations

While a robots txt file generator makes it easy to write the syntax, it is crucial to understand what this file cannot do.

It is not a security measure. Disallowing a path in your robots.txt file tells polite bots not to crawl it, but malicious scrapers will ignore the file entirely. Furthermore, anyone can read your robots.txt file by navigating to it in their browser, meaning you are publicly broadcasting the location of your hidden directories. For true security, use proper authentication and appropriate HTTP Status Codes like 401 Unauthorized or 403 Forbidden.

It does not guarantee de-indexing. If a page is disallowed in robots.txt, Google will not crawl it. However, if that page is linked from somewhere else on the web, Google might still index the URL itself (often displaying a message like "No information is available for this page"). If your goal is to completely remove a page from search engine results, you should allow crawling in robots.txt and instead use a noindex HTML tag. You can generate the correct tags using our Meta Tag Generator.

Deployment and testing

Once you have configured your rules, click download to save the file. The file must be named exactly robots.txt (all lowercase) and uploaded to the root directory of your domain. For example, https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If you place it in a subfolder, such as https://yourdomain.com/assets/robots.txt, crawlers will not find it and will assume you have no restrictions in place.

Frequently asked questions

What is a robots.txt file?
A robots.txt file is a simple text file placed in the root directory of a website. It provides instructions to web robots (like Googlebot) about which pages or files they can or cannot request from your site.
How do I block AI crawlers?
Checking the "Block AI" option in this tool automatically appends rules to disallow known AI data scrapers, including GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, and others. This tells these bots not to use your website's content for training large language models.
What does the crawl delay do?
The crawl delay directive tells bots how many seconds they should wait between successive requests to your server. This is useful if aggressive crawlers are consuming too much bandwidth or slowing down your website. Note that not all search engines (like Google) respect this directive, but many others do.
Where should I place the robots.txt file?
It must be placed in the top-level root directory of your website. For example, if your domain is example.com, the file must be accessible exactly at https://example.com/robots.txt. If it is placed in a subdirectory, crawlers will not find it.
Is my website data sent to a server when using this tool?
No. This robots txt file generator runs entirely locally in your web browser. Your rules, paths, and sitemap URLs are never uploaded or stored on our servers.
Does robots.txt hide my pages from search results?
Not necessarily. While it stops search engines from crawling the page content, the URL might still appear in search results if other sites link to it. To completely remove a page from search indexes, you should use a "noindex" meta tag instead.

Related tools

Meta Tag GeneratorGenerate standard SEO, Open Graph, and Twitter card meta tags with a live search result preview.HTTP Status CodesSearch and filter standard HTTP response codes to quickly understand server errors and status messages.URL Encode & DecodePercent-encode text for URLs or decode encoded URLs and query strings back to readable text.Base64 Encode & DecodeConvert text and files to Base64 and back, with full UTF-8 and Base64URL support.Base64 to ImageDecode Base64 strings and Data URIs back into viewable, downloadable images instantly in your browser.Chmod CalculatorConvert between checkboxes, octal numbers like 755 and symbolic permissions like rwxr-xr-x.