RiverBot User Agent: What It Is & How to Block It

01 · Operator

Who operates RiverBot

Company: River AI Inc.
Type: AI training crawler
Official docs: river.ai

02 · Behavior

What RiverBot does

RiverBot requests only the URLs it has been given and the redirects they lead to. It does not follow links, run JavaScript, submit forms or log in. River says it honours robots.txt and the Content-Signal ai-train=no directive.

03 · Impact

Why RiverBot matters for your site

If you allow it

Your content can inform River's AI models
Requests are verifiable via reverse DNS and HTTP message signatures

If you block it

Training crawls send no referral traffic
Keeps your content out of River model training
Saves crawl bandwidth

04 · Allow

How to allow RiverBot

robots.txt

User-agent: RiverBot
Allow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "RiverBot")
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: RiverBot
Allow: /

nginx

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

Apache

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

05 · Block

How to block RiverBot

RiverBot follows robots.txt, so one rule is enough. Use a server or CDN rule only to stop spoofed copies.

robots.txt

User-agent: RiverBot
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "RiverBot")
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: RiverBot
Disallow: /

nginx

# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "RiverBot") {
    return 403;
}

Apache

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

06 · User agents

User agents we see for RiverBot

The user agent published by the operator:

RiverBot/1.0 (+https://river.ai/bot)

07 · Verification

Is it really RiverBot?

Anyone can copy a user agent. A reverse DNS lookup of a real request resolves to .bot.river.ai, and that hostname resolves back to the same IP.

FAQ

Questions about RiverBot

How do I block RiverBot?

Add "User-agent: RiverBot" followed by "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt. River also treats Content-Signal: ai-train=no as a disallow.

How can I verify RiverBot?

Reverse-resolve the IP, check that the name ends in .bot.river.ai, and confirm it resolves back to the same IP. River also publishes an IP list.

What happens if my robots.txt is unreachable?

River says RiverBot fetches nothing from a site whose robots.txt returns a 5xx error or cannot be reached.

RiverBot is River AI Inc.’s AI training crawler