# AI crawler access test: can answer engines read these vendors?

> 6 of 6 tool sites reachable from our build machine on 2026-09-30. 0 of 6 restrict any checked AI crawler in robots.txt. 5 of 6 ship an /llms.txt (klaviyo, customer-io, mailchimp, omnisend, braze). Median homepage TTFB: activecampaign fastest at 62ms, klaviyo slowest at 720ms.

Human page: https://testedactually.com/marketing-automation/benchmarks/marketing-automation-ai-crawler-access/
Mirror: https://testedactually.com/marketing-automation/benchmarks/marketing-automation-ai-crawler-access.md
Updated: 2026-09-30

Methodology: https://testedactually.com/marketing-automation/benchmarks/marketing-automation-ai-crawler-access/ — script: `scripts/crawler-test.mjs`, n=6 tools × 3 runs, run 2026-09-30.

**AI crawler access test: can answer engines read these vendors? — n=6 tools, 3 runs per tool**

| Tool | TTFB ms (median) | HTML KB | /llms.txt | AI crawler policy | Blocked bots |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [klaviyo](/marketing-automation/klaviyo/) | 720 | 570.2 | yes | open | none |
| [activecampaign](/marketing-automation/activecampaign/) | 62 | 447.8 | no | open | none |
| [customer-io](/marketing-automation/customer-io/) | 69 | 478.9 | yes | open | none |
| [mailchimp](/marketing-automation/mailchimp/) | 151 | 479.2 | yes | open | none |
| [omnisend](/marketing-automation/omnisend/) | 716 | 711.1 | yes | open | none |
| [braze](/marketing-automation/braze/) | 165 | 718.6 | yes | open | none |

### Methodology

- Fetch https://<domain>/robots.txt with a plain HTTP GET and a desktop user agent.
- Parse User-agent groups line by line; a bot is blocked only if a group naming it (or the * wildcard) contains a 'Disallow: /' rule.
- Bots checked: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, Bytespider.
- Policy: blocked = GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and CCBot all disallowed from /; partial = at least one checked bot disallowed; open = no restrictions; unknown = robots.txt unreachable.
- Fetch https://<domain>/llms.txt; llmsTxt = HTTP 200.
- Fetch the homepage 3 times; TTFB is time to response headers; report the median. HTML size is the decoded body length of the last successful fetch.

### Limitations

- Single machine, single network location — TTFB is directional, not global CDN truth.
- n=3 runs per tool; we report the median, not a distribution.
- Simplified robots.txt parsing: bot names matched case-insensitively, only Disallow rules read, path wildcards beyond 'Disallow: /' not modeled.
- Homepage only; vendor pricing pages may have different crawler policies.
- Snapshot of 2026-09-30; vendors change crawler policies without notice.