Question

Should I allow Meta-ExternalAgent?

Updated June 12, 2026

Meta-ExternalAgent is Meta's crawler associated with its AI products. Allow it if you want your content available to Meta AI; block it to opt out. It is separate from Meta's link-preview fetcher, so blocking it does not break Facebook/Instagram link previews.

Decide

• Allow: you want reach across Meta AI surfaces.
• Block: you prefer to opt out of Meta AI use of your content.

Block AI crawl, keep link previews

User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent
Disallow: /
# Link-preview fetches use a different agent and are unaffected.

Verify

grep -i 'Meta-ExternalAgent' /var/log/your-access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head

Related pages: should I allow GPTBot, should I block Bytespider, AI crawler user agents.

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