Meta

Meta AI Crawlers

Agents used to build Meta's Llama models and power AI features across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Purpose: Llama model training and AI features

Quick Facts

Company
Meta
Respects robots.txt
May ignore
Last Updated
2025-05
Official Documentation

📊 Popularity & Traffic

#2Ranking among AI crawlers

One of the largest consumers of web data for LLM training globally.

🤖 User Agent Strings

Use these patterns to identify Meta AI Crawlers in your server logs or configure your robots.txt file.

Meta-ExternalAgent

Respects robots.txt

Primary Meta AI training crawler

Meta-ExternalAgent

facebookexternalhit

May ignore robots.txt

Legacy social metadata fetcher (link previews)

facebookexternalhit

🌐 IP Ranges

Source: Meta ASN ranges (AS32934, AS54115, AS63293)

Identified IP Ranges13 Ranges

31.13.24.0/21
Subnet with 2048 addresses
31.13.64.0/18
Subnet with 16384 addresses
45.64.40.0/22
Subnet with 1024 addresses
57.144.0.0/14
Subnet with 262144 addresses
66.220.144.0/20
Subnet with 4096 addresses
69.63.176.0/20
Subnet with 4096 addresses

How to read CIDR notation:

The /28 suffix indicates a block of 16 IP addresses. For example,.112/28 covers all addresses from .112 up to .127. Adding these to your firewall will block the entire range used by Meta AI Crawlers.

📝 Robots.txt Configuration

Add the following to your robots.txt file to block Meta AI Crawlers:

User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent
Disallow: /

💡 Important Notes

  • Legacy 'facebookexternalhit' may ignore robots.txt for user-shared link previews
  • Meta introduced 'noai' and 'noimageai' robots meta tags for granular control
  • Verify Meta crawlers by checking IP belongs to AS32934, AS54115, or AS63293
  • Meta has increasingly shifted towards its own crawlers instead of relying solely on Common Crawl
Beyond blocking crawlers

See what AI is saying about your brand

Understanding crawlers is step one. With Aiso, you can see the actual conversations happening about your brand inside ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.