This site checks whether named AI bots can reach a URL — robots rules, fetch, and related access signals. AEOForged Layer 1 Audit is a site-wide AI-readiness pass; Site Care, Monitor, and Dominate add a living checklist and citation monitoring. Crawl access is necessary and not sufficient for citations. Same publisher; this is not an independent review.
Who publishes this comparison?
AEOForged and this free crawlability checker are the same publisher. Signed AEOForged prices (2026-08-25) are on AEOForged pricing: Site Care $29/mo, Monitor $149/mo, Dominate $499/mo. The checker is free.
What does the free crawlability checker do?
It probes whether AI user-agents are allowed and whether a URL is fetchable. That answers a different question than Googlebot-only SEO crawl tools. A site can look fine for search and still block GPTBot or PerplexityBot. See the pillar guide on AI crawlability.
Passing a fetch check does not mean an engine will cite you. It means the bot was not obviously locked out. JavaScript-only shells, empty HTML, and blocked paths still fail agents even when robots.txt looks open.
- Job: test AI bot access for a URL.
- Price: free.
- Does not score extractability of the answer.
- Does not keep a citation board or monthly strategy report.
What does AEOForged add?
AEOForged Layer 1 Audit discovers pages and runs deterministic technical and extractability checks — still not a citation guarantee. Site Care ($29/mo) keeps the fix list living. Monitor ($149/mo) and Dominate ($499/mo) watch named questions on a citation board. Crawlability is one layer in that stack, documented at aeoforged.com.
Google's robots introduction remains the access-control file: robots.txt tells agents which paths they may fetch. This checker and AEOForged both treat that file as access, not as a ranking lever.
- Layer 1 Audit (free, bounded): site AI-readiness, including crawl.
- Site Care $29/mo: living fixes; you apply; AEOForged measures.
- Monitor $149/mo and Dominate $499/mo: citation monitoring on top of Care.
When should you use which?
Use this checker when the question is 'can this bot fetch this URL?'. Use AEOForged when you need the rest of the site, extractability scores, or a board of questions after access is healthy.
AEOForged is a competitor for the next tool you pay for. It is not a second independent crawlability vendor. Naming it here is a product comparison inside one publisher.
- 1Run the free checker on your production URL.
- 2Fix robots and rendering until retrieval bots can fetch HTML.
- 3If you need site-wide scores or citation monitoring, continue on AEOForged.
Frequently asked questions
If the checker passes, will ChatGPT cite me?+
No. A pass means the bot could fetch. Citation still depends on extractable answers, accuracy, and authority you cannot fake with robots.txt.
Is this checker the same as AEOForged?+
No. This is a free access probe. AEOForged is the measurement platform. Same publisher.
How much is AEOForged?+
Site Care $29/mo, Monitor $149/mo, Dominate $499/mo on aeoforged.com/pricing as of 2026-08-25.