01 · Operator
Who operates icon.horse
- Company
- Third South Capital
- Type
- Other bot
- Official docs
- icon.horse
02 · Behavior
What icon.horse does
Developers request a site's icon through the icon.horse URL API. The service then fetches the site and picks the best available favicon. Results are cached, and a fallback icon is used if none exists.
03 · Impact
Why icon.horse matters for your site
If you allow it
- Shows your site's icon correctly in apps that use the service
- Light, cached requests
If you block it
- No direct traffic benefit
- Crawling behavior not documented
04 · Allow
How to allow icon.horse
robots.txt
User-agent: icon.horse
Allow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "icon.horse")
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: icon.horse
Allow: /nginx
# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "icon\.horse") { return 403; }Apache
# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} icon\.horse [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]05 · Block
How to block icon.horse
Start with robots.txt. If icon.horse keeps showing up in your logs, block it at your CDN or web server.
robots.txt
User-agent: icon.horse
Disallow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "icon.horse")
Action: BlockWordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: icon.horse
Disallow: /nginx
# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "icon\.horse") {
return 403;
}Apache
# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} icon\.horse [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>06 · User agents
User agents we see for icon.horse
| User agent | Share | Last seen | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
icon.horse/2.0 |
100% | Unverified |
07 · Verification
Is it really icon.horse?
icon.horse’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 icon.horse
What is icon.horse?
It is a favicon API that finds and serves the best icon for any website.
Why is icon.horse requesting my site?
Someone requested your site's favicon through the service, so it fetched your pages to find it.
Last reviewed Oct 8, 2026