What is Scrapy?

Scrapy is an open source web scraping framework written in Python that allows developers to extract data from websites. It is maintained by Zyte and used by millions of developers worldwide to build customizable web scrapers. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.

Category

Scraper
Extracts large amounts of web data, often without explicit website permission

Expected Behavior

Scrapy behaves however its operator configured it, and scrapers as a category are the least polite bots on the web. Expect anything from slow careful extraction to rapid page hammering, robots.txt ignored, and user agent strings that change when blocked. Watch its volume and speed rather than trusting its label.

Overview

Operated By Scrapy
Expected To Follow Robots.txt Yes
Insights Last Updated July 6, 2026

Robots.txt Blocked Percentage

9%
9% of top websites are blocking Scrapy
Learn How →

Country of Origin

United States
Scrapy normally visits From the United States

Robots.txt Blocking Trend

As of July 6, 2026, 9% of top websites block Scrapy in their robots.txt files.

Overall Scraper Traffic

As of July 6, 2026, 0.5% of all web traffic came from scrapers.

Top Visited Website Categories

Games
Food and Drink
Law and Government
Books and Literature
Hobbies and Leisure
Track Scrapers Visiting Your Website
Use Agent Analytics to get realtime visibility into visits from every crawler, scraper, and AI agent.

This data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the world's top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.

Scrapy's User Agent

User Agent Scrapy/2.16.0 (+https://scrapy.org)

Access other known user agents and IP addresses using the Enterprise API.

How To Block Scrapy

Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block Scrapy from accessing your entire website. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.

User-agent: Scrapy # https://knownagents.com/agents/scrapy
Disallow: /
Block Every Scraper
⚠️ Manually adding individual robots.txt rules is not scalable. Instead, use Automatic Robots.txt.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I Block Scrapy?

Often yes. Scrapy extracts content at scale, and scrapers in this category commonly republish or resell what they take. There is rarely an upside for the website being scraped, and copies of your content elsewhere can compete with your own pages in search. For comparison, 9% of the top websites we track already have robots.txt rules for Scrapy.

Does Scrapy Respect Robots.txt?

Yes. Scrapy is expected to honor robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the right first move. Automatic Robots.txt adds and maintains that rule for you, and Agent Analytics confirms Scrapy actually honors it.

Does Scrapy Access Private Content?

Assume Scrapy will try. Scrapers routinely ignore robots.txt, and some go after paywalled or gated content when it has value. Real authentication stops most of them. Politeness conventions stop almost none of them.

Why Is Scrapy Visiting My Website?

Your site has data Scrapy's operator wants, like prices, listings, contact details, or articles. Scrapers target sites deliberately, so repeated visits mean your content specifically is the goal.

How Can I Tell if Scrapy Is Visiting My Website?

Agent Analytics tracks Scrapy visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user agent string contains "Scrapy". Look for fast sequential requests across many pages. Keep in mind that Scrapy doesn't publish a verification method, so any client can claim its user agent string and a log match is a hint rather than proof.

References