What is Synthetic Bot?
Synthetic Bot is a developer helper operated by Datadog. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Datadog |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | No |
| Insights Last Updated | August 11, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
Synthetic Bot's traffic often follows fixed intervals like a cron job. Activity may consist of short recurring checks or occasional intensive bursts, but it usually remains limited to a specific set of pages or endpoints.
How To Block Synthetic Bot With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to request that Synthetic Bot not access your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to request the same of all developer helpers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: Synthetic Bot # https://knownagents.com/agents/synthetic-bot
Disallow: /Global Statistics for Synthetic Bot
As of August 11, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
0% of top websites block Synthetic Bot in their robots.txt files.
Overall Developer Helper Traffic
0.3% of all web traffic came from developer helpers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block Synthetic Bot?
Only if no one on your team relies on it. Synthetic Bot may support uptime monitoring, performance tests, or audits. Blocking it without checking first can silently disrupt those workflows. Almost none of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for Synthetic Bot.
Does Synthetic Bot Follow Robots.txt Rules?
No. Synthetic Bot is not expected to follow robots.txt directives, so a disallow rule only communicates your preference. Enforce the block with firewall or server rules, then use Agent Analytics to verify that its requests stop.
Does Synthetic Bot Access Private Content?
Only when configured with access. A team may grant Synthetic Bot credentials to monitor staging sites or private health endpoints. Without those credentials, it sees only public pages.
Why Is Synthetic Bot Visiting My Website?
Someone, most likely on your own team, configured Synthetic Bot to check your site. Uptime monitors, performance testers, and audit tools visit only the sites or endpoints they are told to watch.
How Can I Tell if Synthetic Bot Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks Synthetic Bot visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "Synthetic Bot". Look for repeated checks of the same pages or endpoints at regular intervals. Because Synthetic Bot does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.