Checkly
Checkly •
Since 2019
Quick Actions
Official Docs
What is Checkly?
Checkly is a synthetic monitoring platform that uses Playwright and Puppeteer for end-to-end testing and API monitoring. It allows developers to write monitoring checks as code, running them from global locations to verify website functionality, API availability, and performance. The bot targets specific URLs configured by its users rather than performing broad web crawling.
User Agent String
Checkly/1.0 (https://www.checklyhq.com)
How to Control Checkly
Block Completely
To prevent Checkly from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block Checkly
User-agent: Checkly
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: Checkly
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /public/
Set Crawl Delay
To slow down the crawl rate (note: not all bots respect this directive):
User-agent: Checkly
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify Checkly
Verification Method:
Check user agent string for Checkly identifier
Check user agent string for Checkly identifier
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect Checkly in your application:
Basic Pattern
/Checkly/iStrict Pattern
/^Checkly/1\.0 \(https\://www\.checklyhq\.com\)$/Flexible Pattern
/Checkly[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/iVendor Match
/.*Checkly.*Checkly/iImplementation Examples
// PHP Detection for Checkly
function detect_checkly() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/Checkly/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('Checkly detected from IP: ' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
// Set cache headers
header('Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600');
header('X-Robots-Tag: noarchive');
// Optional: Serve cached version
if (file_exists('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html')) {
readfile('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for Checkly
import re
from flask import request, make_responsedef detect_checkly():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'Checkly'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False# Django Middleware
class ChecklyMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for Checkly
const express = require('express');
const app = express();// Middleware to detect Checkly
function detectCheckly(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /Checkly/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('Checkly detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'Checkly';
}
next();
}app.use(detectCheckly);
# Apache .htaccess rules for Checkly# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Checkly [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Checkly [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Checkly" is_bot=1# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Checkly/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for Checkly# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_checkly {
default 0;
~*Checkly 1;
}server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_checkly) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_checkly) {
root /var/www/cached;
try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/index.html @backend;
}
try_files $uri @backend;
}
# Add headers for bot requests
location @backend {
if ($is_checkly) {
add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600";
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noarchive";
}
proxy_pass http://backend;
}
}
Should You Block This Bot?
Recommendations based on your website type:
| Site Type | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | Optional | Evaluate based on bandwidth usage vs. benefits |
| Blog/News | Allow | Increases content reach and discoverability |
| SaaS Application | Block | No benefit for application interfaces; preserve resources |
| Documentation | Selective | Allow for public docs, block for internal docs |
| Corporate Site | Limit | Allow for public pages, block sensitive areas like intranets |
Advanced robots.txt Configurations
E-commerce Site Configuration
User-agent: Checkly
Crawl-delay: 5
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /*?sort=
Disallow: /*?filter=
Disallow: /*&page=
Allow: /products/
Allow: /categories/
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Publishing/Blog Configuration
User-agent: Checkly
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: Checkly
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
ChecklyRobots.txt Name
ChecklyCategory
monitoringRespects robots.txt
May not respect
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