October 2026
Which marketplaces block AI agents: Amazon, eBay, Zillow, LinkedIn and more
Most big marketplaces now limit AI agents, but they don’t all draw the line in the same place. Amazon keeps every named AI agent out. eBay and Shopify stores let agents read listings and keep them out of checkout. LinkedIn, Yelp and Facebook keep out almost every bot they haven’t approved. Indeed lets agents that fetch a page for a person in on the same terms as Google. The table below comes from each site’s own robots.txt and terms, read on October 12, 2026.
Three kinds of AI bot, and why the difference matters
robots.txt names bots one by one, and AI companies now send separate bots for separate jobs. A site can treat each one differently, and most of the sites below do.
- Training crawlers collect pages to train models: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Bytespider.
- Search crawlers build the index an AI assistant searches: OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot.
- User agents fetch one page because a person just asked: ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User.
Browser agents such as Perplexity’s Comet, OpenAI’s Atlas and Meta’s Muse are a fourth case. They drive a real browser, so robots.txt says little about them. The rules that reach them are in the terms of use, and in what the site does when it spots one.
What each marketplace allows, October 2026
| Site | Reading listings | Buying or contacting |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | Blocked. robots.txt disallows all of Amazon to every named AI bot, including ChatGPT-User, Claude-User and Perplexity-User | Blocked. Amazon sued Perplexity over Comet and cut off Meta’s Muse in September 2026 |
| eBay | Allowed for search and user agents, on rules close to Google’s. Training crawlers are kept to help and seller pages | Blocked. The user agreement bans buy-for-me agents from February 20, 2026, unless eBay approves them |
| Shopify stores | Allowed: products, collections and carts are open to crawl | Only through Shopify’s agent endpoints or Shop skill, with the buyer approving each payment |
| Walmart, Target, Etsy | No rules for AI bots in robots.txt; the general rules apply | Walmart and Etsy sell inside ChatGPT through OpenAI’s Instant Checkout instead |
| Facebook Marketplace | Blocked. Any bot not named is disallowed from all of Facebook, and the named ones need Meta’s written permission | Blocked |
| Craigslist | robots.txt is short, but the terms ban robots and scrapers and charge $0.25 a page past 1,000 pages a day | Blocked by the same terms |
| Zillow | The terms bar automated access. Some AI crawlers, such as Amazonbot and Meta-ExternalAgent, may read only guides and the blog | Blocked by the terms |
| Realtor.com, Redfin | Realtor.com blocks GoogleOther and Meta-ExternalAgent. Redfin has no AI-specific rules | Through each site’s own forms |
| Airbnb | GPTBot, ClaudeBot and Applebot-Extended are blocked; search and user agents get the same rules as any bot | Through Airbnb only |
| Indeed | Allowed. ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User and the AI search crawlers get the same rules as Google. Training crawlers get fewer pages | Applying stays on Indeed |
| Blocked for every bot not approved. OAI-SearchBot and Claude-SearchBot may read some pages; ChatGPT-User and Claude-User may not | Blocked by the user agreement | |
| Glassdoor | GPTBot, ClaudeBot and others may read only the blog and employer pages; CCBot, Bytespider and Diffbot are blocked | Through Glassdoor only |
| Yelp | Blocked. User agents such as ChatGPT-User and Claude-User may read only Yelp’s articles, not business pages | Blocked |
| Taskrabbit, Angi | Taskrabbit lets OAI-SearchBot read everything and keeps GPTBot out of forms and messages. Angi has no AI-specific rules | Through each site’s own booking |
robots.txt files change often, and several of these changed more than once in the last year. Open /robots.txt on any site to see today’s version.
Amazon: no third-party agents at all
Amazon’s robots.txt has a Disallow: / for each AI bot it names, which takes in the training crawlers, the search crawlers and the agents that fetch a page for one person:
User-agent: ChatGPT-User Disallow: / User-agent: Claude-User Disallow: / User-agent: Perplexity-User Disallow: /
Browser agents are handled outside robots.txt. Amazon sued Perplexity in November 2025 over its Comet browser, and in September 2026 began showing Muse users a notice that an unauthorized AI agent breaks Amazon’s Conditions of Use. Amazon’s own agents, Rufus (now Alexa for Shopping) and Buy for Me, are the way in it offers.
eBay and Shopify: read, but don’t check out
eBay put its rule at the top of its robots.txt in December 2025, then wrote the same words into its user agreement:
# Robots & Agent Policy # # Checkouts are strictly for human users. # * Automated scraping, buy-for-me agents, LLM-driven bots, or any # end-to-end flow that attempts to place orders without human review # is strictly prohibited.
Below that, eBay lets OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User read listings on rules much like a search engine’s. So an agent can find an item on eBay and send its person the link. It can’t bid or buy unless eBay has approved it, and approved integrations go through eBay’s API.
Shopify stores carry a similar note. The current one says checkouts are for humans, and sends agents that buy for someone to the store’s UCP and MCP endpoints or to Shopify’s shopping skill, both of which ask the buyer to approve the payment. Reading products is open.
Listing sites: homes, jobs and local services
The sites that hold listings of homes, jobs and services are stricter than the stores, mostly through their terms rather than robots.txt. Craigslist, Zillow, LinkedIn, Facebook and Yelp all forbid automated access without permission, and Craigslist has enforced its terms in court, with judgments of $60.5 million against RadPad and $31 million against Instamotor in 2017.
Indeed is the clearest exception. It groups the agents that fetch a page for a person with Google and Bing, so ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity can read a job when someone asks about it.
What this means if you use an AI agent
- Asking ChatGPT or Claude to find a product on Amazon often fails, because the agent isn’t allowed to open the page.
- On eBay and Shopify stores an agent can find and compare, then hand you the link to buy.
- For apartments, local services and second-hand goods, the biggest sites are mostly closed to agents. The agent sees what web search shows it, and usually has no way to message the owner.
That last gap is why we built Openpath. It lists homes, jobs, services and products from owners’ own feeds and from pages whose owners let crawlers in, and every listing has an inbox an agent can write to. OpenpathBot doesn’t read sites whose terms forbid it, Craigslist, Zillow, eBay and Facebook Marketplace among them. More on what agents can do instead in when a marketplace blocks your AI agent.
Questions people ask
Does Amazon block ChatGPT?
Yes. Amazon’s robots.txt disallows ChatGPT-User, the bot ChatGPT uses to open a page for you, and OAI-SearchBot, which builds ChatGPT’s search index, along with the agents of Anthropic, Perplexity, Google and Meta.
Can an AI agent buy on eBay?
Not on its own. Since February 20, 2026, eBay’s user agreement bans buy-for-me agents and any flow that places an order without a person reviewing it, unless eBay has given permission. An agent can still find a listing and send you the link.
Is robots.txt legally binding?
Not by itself; it is a request that well-behaved bots follow. The terms of use are where the legal weight is, which is why eBay and Amazon put their rules there too. This post isn’t legal advice.
Sources
- Each site’s robots.txt, read on October 12, 2026, and the terms of use of Craigslist, Zillow, LinkedIn, Facebook and Yelp
- Value Added Resource, eBay bans AI buy-for-me agents
- GeekWire, Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse
- MediaPost, Craigslist awarded $31 million judgment