01 · Operator
Who operates Qwantbot
- Company
- Qwant
- Official docs
- help.qwant.com
02 · Behavior
What Qwantbot does
Qwantbot crawls websites to build and refresh the Qwant search index. A news variant identifies itself as Qwantbot-news. The user agent may also include a worker ID that names the source machine.
03 · Impact
Why Qwantbot matters for your site
If you allow it
- Your pages can appear in Qwant search
- Honors robots.txt and crawl-delay
- Easy to verify
If you block it
- Limited referral traffic for many sites
- Adds crawl load
04 · Allow
How to allow Qwantbot
robots.txt
User-agent: Qwantbot
Allow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Qwantbot")
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: Qwantbot
Allow: /nginx
# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "Qwantbot") { return 403; }Apache
# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Qwantbot [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]05 · Block
How to block Qwantbot
Qwantbot follows robots.txt, so one rule is enough. Use a server or CDN rule only to stop spoofed copies.
robots.txt
User-agent: Qwantbot
Disallow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Qwantbot")
Action: BlockWordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Qwantbot
Disallow: /nginx
# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Qwantbot") {
return 403;
}Apache
# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Qwantbot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>06 · User agents
User agents we see for Qwantbot
The user agent published by the operator:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Qwantbot-news/2.0; +https://help.qwant.com/bot/)07 · Verification
Is it really Qwantbot?
Anyone can copy a user agent. Real Qwantbot requests come from the IP ranges published at help.qwant.com/qwantbot.json. A reverse DNS lookup of a real request resolves to qwant.com, and that hostname resolves back to the same IP.
FAQ
Questions about Qwantbot
What is Qwantbot?
Qwantbot is the official indexing robot of the Qwant search engine.
Does Qwantbot respect crawl-delay?
Yes. Qwant documents support for robots.txt rules, including the Crawl-delay directive.
How do I verify Qwantbot?
Run a reverse DNS lookup and check that the hostname ends in qwant.com, then confirm with forward DNS. You can also check Qwant's qwantbot.json IP list.
Last reviewed Oct 7, 2026