Patreon has begun actively blocking AI bots that attempt to scrape its content for training purposes, a move confirmed on Thursday via a partnership with Cloudflare.
The platform states these stricter measures were required because AI scraping has grown more sophisticated since Patreon first introduced deterrents in 2023. While the paywall had previously kept much of creators’ work out of reach, new discovery features like the redesigned Home Feed and Quips have since increased exposure to crawlers.
This shift aligns with a broader trend where publishers are addressing how AI systems ingest their material. Cloudflare now offers tools allowing sites to restrict AI bots, including a marketplace where websites can charge fees for scraping known as Pay Per Crawl. Earlier this month, the infrastructure provider updated its policies to block “mixed-use” crawlers by default on pages hosting ads.
Patreon is extending its collaboration with Cloudflare to deploy AI Crawl Control technology for updating its enforcement tools. The distinction is clear: rather than relying on robots.txt files to ask bots not to scrape, the platform is now physically blocking access.
“Consent shouldn’t depend on whether a scraper chooses to behave,” the company’s blog post explains regarding the new restrictions.
Testing revealed a sharp drop in activity. Weekly attempts by individual AI training crawlers to access Patreon fell from thousands to zero. This suggests the bots were ignoring the robots.txt instructions and proceeding with the scrape anyway.
The company will continue to permit bots that index pages and organise information to help users find content on Patreon.
“As AI agents become increasingly powerful and popular, creators deserve a meaningful say in how their work is used by AI companies,” said Drew Rowny, product chief at Patreon. “On most of the Internet, creators have to accept AI training on their work just to reach and grow an audience. Patreon has a different vision: creators should be able to grow their audience and control how their work is used.”
What it means
For creators on the platform, the ability to opt out of having their work used for AI training is no longer conditional on the bot’s behaviour. The change removes the uncertainty of whether a scraper will respect requests to stop.
