Overview
Cloudflare Prefetch is a CDN service bot from Cloudflare used for cache checks, content delivery diagnostics, edge-network fetches, and service availability checks.
Its primary user-agent pattern is CloudFlare-Prefetch; related patterns include CloudFlare-Prefetch/0.1; Cloudflare Prefetch URLs.
Cloudflare Prefetch is Verified from current authoritative identity documentation reviewed on 2026-08-07. The identity type is Official Documented.
Robots.txt behavior is not currently confirmed.
Cloudflare Prefetch should be reviewed against site policy, source evidence, crawl rate, and requested paths before a permanent allow or block rule is created.
Identity
- User-Agent Pattern
-
CloudFlare-Prefetch - Aliases
- CloudFlare-Prefetch/0.1; Cloudflare Prefetch URLs
- HTTP Agent Examples
-
CloudFlare-Prefetch - Robots Token
- CloudFlare-Prefetch
- Identity Type
- Officially documented
- Evidence Method
- Match `CloudFlare-Prefetch` to the current operator documentation and corroborate the request with operator-controlled verification signals where available; User-Agent strings alone can be spoofed.
Classification
- Type
- Cdn service
- Kind
- Fetcher
- Family
- Cloudflare
- Purpose
- Prefetching
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- Cloudflare Prefetch is used for cache checks, content delivery diagnostics, edge-network fetches, and service availability checks.
- Detection Notes
- Cloudflare Prefetch traffic is primarily detected by the `CloudFlare-Prefetch` user-agent pattern; related patterns include `CloudFlare-Prefetch/0.1; Cloudflare Prefetch URLs`. Compare source IPs, reverse DNS, request paths, and crawl cadence with Cloudflare infrastructure before trusting the traffic.
- Respects robots.txt
- Unknown
- Spoofing Risk
- Cloudflare Prefetch has medium spoofing risk because the user-agent can be copied, even when the bot has strong source or documentation support.
- Risk
- Neutral
- Recommended Handling
- Depends
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
-
# robots.txt behavior is unconfirmed. Do not rely on this rule without verification.
Relationships
- Operator
- Cloudflare Checked 2026-08-07
Relationships without an Evidence link are normalized from the canonical directory record. They should not be interpreted as independent proof of physical presence or request origin.