Internet infrastructure giant Cloudflare accused AI search startup Perplexity on Monday of deploying undeclared “stealth crawlers” to systematically bypass website restrictions and scrape content from sites that have explicitly blocked its bots.
In a detailed blog post, Cloudflare alleged that Perplexity disguises its automated crawlers as regular web browsers and rotates IP addresses to evade detection when its official bots are blocked by robots.txt files — the standard protocol websites use to tell crawlers which pages should not be accessed.
“We are observing stealth crawling behavior from Perplexity,” wrote Cloudflare engineers Gabriel Corral, Vaibhav Singhal, Brian Mitchell, and Reid Tatoris. “When they are presented with a network block, they appear to obscure their crawling identity in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences.”
Cloudflare said it launched its investigation after receiving complaints from customers who had blocked Perplexity’s official crawlers but continued to see their content appear in the AI company’s search results.
To test the allegations, Cloudflare created new domains that were not publicly accessible and configured them to deny all automated access. Despite these restrictions, Perplexity was still able to provide detailed information about the protected content when queried, according to the report.
Cloudflare said it detected the unauthorized crawling through machine learning and network analysis, identifying millions of daily requests spread across thousands of websites.
Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer dismissed the allegations in an email to TechCrunch, calling Cloudflare’s post a “sales pitch” and claiming the screenshots provided “show that no content was accessed.” Dwyer also said the crawler identified by Cloudflare “isn’t even ours.”
As a result of its findings, Cloudflare said it has removed Perplexity from its list of verified bots and implemented new blocking measures.
Read: Did Perplexity Fudge Its Numbers?
Perplexity, which reportedly achieved an $18 billion valuation in July 2025, has faced similar allegations in the past, including legal threats from major news organizations like the BBC.
The dispute comes as Apple is reportedly considering acquiring Perplexity, though neither company has confirmed such discussions.
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