Who.is Bot User Agent: What It Is & How to Block It

01 · Operator

Who operates Who.is Bot

Company: who.is
Type: Monitoring bot
Official docs: who.is

02 · Behavior

What Who.is Bot does

who.is offers WHOIS, RDAP, DNS and IP lookups for domains. It also offers uptime monitoring and website checks. The bot likely fetches sites for these checks; who.is does not document it.

03 · Impact

Why Who.is Bot matters for your site

If you allow it

Supports uptime and website checks you or others run
Low traffic volume

If you block it

Not a search engine
Not documented by the operator

04 · Allow

How to allow Who.is Bot

robots.txt

User-agent: Who.is Bot
Allow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Who.is Bot")
Action:     Skip › All Super Bot Fight Mode rules

# Also check Security › Bots: "Block AI bots" can block it regardless of robots.txt.

WordPress

# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Who.is Bot
Allow: /

nginx

# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "Who\.is Bot") { return 403; }

Apache

# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Who\.is Bot [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

05 · Block

How to block Who.is Bot

Start with robots.txt. If Who.is Bot keeps showing up in your logs, block it at your CDN or web server.

robots.txt

User-agent: Who.is Bot
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Who.is Bot")
Action:     Block

WordPress

# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Who.is Bot
Disallow: /

nginx

# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Who\.is Bot") {
    return 403;
}

Apache

# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Who\.is Bot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>

06 · User agents

User agents we see for Who.is Bot

The user agent published by the operator:

Who.is Bot

07 · Verification

Is it really Who.is Bot?

Who.is Bot’s operator publishes no IP ranges or hostnames, so requests cannot be verified. Treat the user agent as a claim, and watch your logs for unusual request rates.

FAQ

Questions about Who.is Bot

What is Who.is Bot?

It is the user agent of who.is, a domain lookup service that also offers website and uptime checks.

How do I block Who.is Bot?

Block the user agent string "Who.is Bot" on your server. robots.txt support is not documented.

Who.is Bot is who.is’ monitoring bot