# Applebot-Extended vs ClaudeBot

Applebot-Extended and ClaudeBot compared on 14 documented fields, from 20 claims, last verified 2026-09-15.

| Field | Applebot-Extended | ClaudeBot | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| anti_circumvention_stance | not documented | documented | different |
| honours_crawl_delay | n/a | yes | different |
| observed_fetches_json | not documented | yes | different |
| observed_fetches_markdown | not documented | yes | different |
| observed_first_request_path | not documented | /sitemap.xml | different |
| observed_format_pass_order | not documented | html_json_md | different |
| publishes_ip_list | no | yes | different |
| purpose_documented | policy_only | training | different |
| respects_robots_txt | n/a | yes | different |
| robots_token_differs_from_ua | yes | not documented | different |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | yes | yes | same |
| user_agent_string_full | not documented | not_documented | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | n/a | not_documented | different |
| what_it_controls | AI training use of content, not search indexing | not documented | different |

## Differences

| Field | Applebot-Extended statement | ClaudeBot statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| anti_circumvention_stance | not documented | ClaudeBot respects anti-circumvention technologies and does not bypass CAPTCHAs on crawled sites. |
| honours_crawl_delay | Apple does not publish a Crawl-delay behaviour for Applebot-Extended. | Anthropic supports the non-standard robots.txt Crawl-delay extension for ClaudeBot. |
| observed_fetches_json | not documented | ClaudeBot made 177 JSON requests to Rattlesnakes By Mail between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z, covering the .json twin of 170 base paths. The .json URLs of Rattlesnakes By Mail appear in no entry of the 171 URL sitemap. |
| observed_fetches_markdown | not documented | ClaudeBot fetched the .md twin of 170 base paths on Rattlesnakes By Mail between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z, 170 Markdown requests of 542 ClaudeBot requests in that window. The .md URLs of Rattlesnakes By Mail appear in no entry of the 171 URL sitemap. |
| observed_first_request_path | not documented | ClaudeBot's first request to Rattlesnakes By Mail between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z was /sitemap.xml at 2026-09-14T19:53:45Z. ClaudeBot fetched /robots.txt on the second request to Rattlesnakes By Mail. |
| observed_format_pass_order | not documented | ClaudeBot fetched Rattlesnakes By Mail in three format passes between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z, HTML from 2026-09-14T20:52Z to 2026-09-14T20:57Z, then JSON from 2026-09-14T21:37Z to 2026-09-14T21:56Z, then Markdown from 2026-09-14T21:37Z to 2026-09-14T21:57Z. The same order holds on 170 of 170 base paths that ClaudeBot fetched in all three formats on Rattlesnakes By Mail. |
| publishes_ip_list | Apple publishes no IP list specific to Applebot-Extended and documents one shared crawl identity for Applebot. | Anthropic publishes the IP address ranges used by ClaudeBot as a JSON file at https://claude.com/crawling/bots.json. |
| purpose_documented | Applebot-Extended controls whether website content is used to train Apple general purpose foundation models. | ClaudeBot collects web content for training Anthropic generative AI models. |
| respects_robots_txt | Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt token that publishers disallow to opt out of generative model training. | ClaudeBot honours industry standard robots.txt directives that signal do not crawl. |
| robots_token_differs_from_ua | Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt control token and does not correspond to a separate crawler user agent string. | not documented |
| user_agent_string_full | not documented | Anthropic does not publish a full user agent string for ClaudeBot. |
| verifiable_by_rdns | Apple does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method specific to Applebot-Extended. | Anthropic does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method for ClaudeBot. |
| what_it_controls | Applebot-Extended controls the AI training use of crawled content and does not control search indexing. | not documented |

## Sources

- https://claude.com/crawling/bots.json
- https://rattlesnakesbymail.com/observed/claudebot
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829
- https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-content-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler