01 · Operator
Who operates Pinterestbot
- Company
- Type
- Social preview bot
- Official docs
- help.pinterest.com
02 · Behavior
What Pinterestbot does
Pinterestbot crawls public sites to index content. It refreshes Pin metadata such as price, title and availability. It also detects broken links. Pinterest states it does not use the crawl to train image generation models.
03 · Impact
Why Pinterestbot matters for your site
If you allow it
- Keeps Pins of your pages accurate
- Can drive referral traffic from Pinterest
If you block it
- Your content is not relevant for Pinterest
- You want to reduce crawl load
04 · Allow
How to allow Pinterestbot
robots.txt
User-agent: Pinterestbot
Allow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Pinterestbot")
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: Pinterestbot
Allow: /nginx
# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "Pinterestbot") { return 403; }Apache
# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Pinterestbot [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]05 · Block
How to block Pinterestbot
Pinterestbot follows robots.txt, so one rule is enough. Use a server or CDN rule only to stop spoofed copies.
robots.txt
User-agent: Pinterestbot
Disallow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Pinterestbot")
Action: BlockWordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Pinterestbot
Disallow: /nginx
# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Pinterestbot") {
return 403;
}Apache
# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Pinterestbot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>06 · User agents
User agents we see for Pinterestbot
The user agent published by the operator:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Pinterestbot/1.0; +https://www.pinterest.com/bot.html)07 · Verification
Is it really Pinterestbot?
Anyone can copy a user agent. A reverse DNS lookup of a real request resolves to pinterest.com</code>, <code>pinterestcrawler.com, and that hostname resolves back to the same IP.
FAQ
Questions about Pinterestbot
Does Pinterestbot respect robots.txt?
Yes. Pinterest supports disallow, allow and crawl-delay for the Pinterestbot token. Crawl-delay values above 1 second are capped at 1.
How do I verify Pinterestbot?
Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP and check it ends in pinterest.com or pinterestcrawler.com. Then confirm with a forward lookup.
Does Pinterest use crawled content for AI training?
Pinterest states that Pinterestbot does not train image generation models.
Last reviewed Oct 7, 2026