← All news·2026-07-01·3 min read

Cloudflare Issues Ultimatum To AI Bots: Pay Up Or Be Blocked

Cloudflare gave AI companies until September 15th, 2026 to have separate search and training crawlers or they’ll be blocked by default. And the company just announced a new Pay Per Use program that lets publishers charge AI companies for access to their content.

aicloudflarepublishersregulationdata

Cloudflare gave AI companies until September 15th, 2026 to have separate search and training crawlers or they’ll be blocked by default. And the company just announced a new Pay Per Use program that lets publishers charge AI companies for access to their content.

Cloudflare handles half the world’s Internet traffic, so it’s more than just a company giving you a stern warning. This is a bona fide infrastructure threat, and it’s going to force AI companies to become transparent or get cut off from the biggest highway on the web.

Source: techcrunch.com

Free course

Stop reading about AI — start building with it

The free Claude Code course: your first site, tool or game — no coding. No upsells, no cross-sells — nothing to buy here.

Start free →
EAEvgenii Arsentev

Author

Evgenii Arsentev

PhD · Chief Executive Officer, digital health