Bot Fight Mode

Bot Fight Mode is a simple, free product that helps detect and mitigate bot traffic on your domain. When enabled, the product:

• Identifies traffic matching patterns of known bots
• Issues computationally expensive challenges in response to these bots
• Notifies Bandwidth Alliance ↗ partners (if applicable) to disable bots

Considerations

Bot Fight Mode and Super Bot Fight Mode use the same underlying technology that powers our Bot Management ↗ product. Specifically, these products:

• Protect entire domains without endpoint restrictions
• Cannot be customized, adjusted, or reconfigured via WAF custom rules

Although these products are designed to fight malicious actors on the Internet, they may challenge API or mobile app traffic. For more granular control, upgrade to Bot Management for Enterprise.

Enable Bot Fight Mode

To start using Bot Fight Mode:

1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard ↗ and select your account and domain.
2. Go to Security > Bots.
3. For Bot Fight Mode, select On.

Note

If you are upgrading from Bot Fight Mode to Super Bot Fight Mode, you must disable Bot Fight Mode in your Bot settings.

To turn off Bot Fight Mode, go to Security > Bots and select Configure Super Bot Fight Mode.

Disable Bot Fight Mode

If you find that Bot Fight Mode is causing problems with your application traffic, you may want to disable it.

To disable Bot Fight Mode:

1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard ↗ and select your account and domain.
2. Go to Security > Bots.
3. For Bot Fight Mode, select Off.

Block AI bots

AI Bots will block Definitely Automated bots and Verified AI Bots, such as AI Search, AI Assistant, AI Crawler, or an AI Archiver.

To block AI bots:

1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard ↗ and select your account and domain.
2. Go to Security > Bots.
3. Select Configure Bot Fight Mode.
4. Enable Block AI bots.

Note

You can view blocked AI bot traffic via Security Analytics.

Enable AI Labyrinth

AI Labyrinth decreases the accuracy and wastes the resources of AI Bots by confabulating articles on your website that are not visible to users.

To enable AI Labyrinth:

1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard ↗ and select your account and domain.
2. Go to Security > Bots.
3. Select Configure Bot Fight Mode.
4. Enable AI Labyrinth.

Visibility

You can see bot-related actions by going to Security > Events. Any requests challenged by this product will be labeled Bot Fight Mode in the Service field. This allows you to observe, analyze, and follow trends in your bot traffic over time.

Limitations

You cannot bypass or skip Bot Fight Mode using the Skip action in WAF custom rules or using Page Rules. Skip, Bypass, and Allow actions apply to rules or rulesets running on the Ruleset Engine. While Super Bot Fight Mode rules are implemented in the Ruleset Engine, Bot Fight Mode checks are not. This is why you can skip Super Bot Fight Mode, but not Bot Fight Mode. If you need to skip Bot Fight Mode, consider using Super Bot Fight Mode.

Bot Fight Mode can still trigger if you have IP Access rules, but it cannot trigger if an IP Access rule matches the request. For example, the IP Access rule matches the connecting IP.