Bingbot (Microsoft)

Classic search · Current version 2.0

What it is

Bingbot is Bing’s standard crawler and handles most of Bing’s daily crawling. Blocking it stops Bing from crawling your pages. Besides robots.txt, Bing lets you set crawl rates by the hour with the Crawl control tool in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Official documentation: www.bing.com · checked 13 Nov 2026

Bingbot user agent

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

Official documentation: www.bing.com/webmasters/help/which-crawlers-does-bing-use-8c184ec0 · checked 13 Nov 2026

Block or allow Bingbot in robots.txt

Put these lines at the top of the robots.txt file in your site’s root (example.com/robots.txt). Each subdomain needs its own file.

Block Bingbot from the whole site
User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /
Allow Bingbot
User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /
# repeat here the Disallow lines of your User-agent: * group

If Bingbot is not named in robots.txt, it already follows your User-agent: * rules, so you don’t need anything. A group of its own replaces the * group for this bot entirely: if you add one, repeat your general Disallow lines in it.

  • Bing says that when Bingbot finds a group for itself, it ignores the generic User-agent: * group, so repeat your general rules inside its group.

Bingbot IP ranges

www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json

Official list: 29 ranges · published by the owner 3 Jan 2024 · we checked it 13 Nov 2026

Check an IP from your logs

The owner also documents a DNS check: the reverse lookup of the IP must give a host name ending in search.msn.com, and the forward lookup of that name must return the same IP. Official documentation

Show all 29
  • 13.66.139.0/24
  • 13.66.144.0/24
  • 13.67.10.16/28
  • 13.69.66.240/28
  • 13.71.172.224/28
  • 20.15.133.160/27
  • 20.36.108.32/28
  • 20.43.120.16/28
  • 20.74.197.0/28
  • 20.79.107.240/28
  • 20.125.163.80/28
  • 40.77.139.0/25
  • 40.77.167.0/24
  • 40.77.177.0/24
  • 40.77.178.0/23
  • 40.77.188.0/22
  • 40.77.202.0/24
  • 40.79.131.208/28
  • 40.79.186.176/28
  • 51.105.67.0/28
  • 52.130.224.112/28
  • 52.167.144.0/24
  • 52.231.148.0/28
  • 65.55.210.0/24
  • 139.217.52.0/28
  • 157.55.39.0/24
  • 191.233.204.224/28
  • 199.30.24.0/23
  • 207.46.13.0/24

Does it respect robots.txt and Crawl-delay?

robots.txt: yes, Bingbot follows it according to its owner.

“Robots.txt files can be configured to tell Bing crawlers how to interact with your website.” — Microsoft documentation

Crawl-delay: supported for Bingbot.

“If you want to add customized directives for specific bots that are not appropriate for all bots, such as crawl-delay, add them in a custom section after the first, generic section, changing the User-agent reference to a specific bot.” — Microsoft documentation

Should you block Bingbot?

Almost never. Blocking Bingbot takes your site out of that search engine. To limit only AI uses of your content, use the AI tokens and crawlers listed in this directory.

Check your site

See whether your robots.txt and firewall let Bingbot in — together with every other AI bot in this directory. Free, no sign-up.

Questions

What is the Bingbot user agent string?+

Microsoft documents it as: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36

How do I block Bingbot in robots.txt?+

Add a group for it to robots.txt in your site’s root: “User-agent: Bingbot” followed by “Disallow: /”.

What IP addresses does Bingbot use?+

Microsoft publishes 29 ranges at https://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json. Requests that call themselves Bingbot from other addresses are most likely fake.

Does Bingbot respect robots.txt?+

robots.txt: yes, Bingbot follows it according to its owner.

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