How can I identify CoScheduleBot?

Its user agent always contains CoScheduleBot, and the browser version in the user agent changes from time to time. A reverse lookup of its addresses returns hostnames that resolve back to the same address.

What should I ask my host to allow?

Allow requests whose user agent contains CoScheduleBot, and allow the two IP addresses this article lists. Allowing the addresses is often not enough, so firewall or bot protection rules must let CoScheduleBot through too.

What CoScheduleBot is

Q: What if my site uses Cloudflare?

Ask whoever manages it to add a rule that lets requests whose user agent contains CoScheduleBot skip its security checks. A skip rule doesn't get past Bot Fight Mode, so that needs to be turned off.

CoScheduleBot is CoSchedule's web crawler. It reads the pages you link to in the social composer to build link previews, and it syncs your WordPress site with your calendar. This applies to every plan.

Signs a site is blocking CoScheduleBot

A social message that links to the site shows the wrong image or no link preview. See Fix a wrong link image or missing link in a social message.
WordPress won't connect, or posts stop syncing. See Fix "Could not reach WordPress admin" and firewall problems.

What to allow

Ask your web host, or whoever manages your site's security, to allow:

Requests whose user agent contains CoScheduleBot.
34.202.82.63, the address CoSchedule uses for link previews and WordPress syncing.
52.71.109.154, the address of CoSchedule's Static IP Proxy for WordPress.

Allowing the IP addresses is often not enough. Most blocks come from firewall or bot protection rules that stop CoScheduleBot whatever address it comes from, so those rules need to let it through too.

If your site uses Cloudflare, ask whoever manages it to add a rule that lets requests whose user agent contains CoScheduleBot skip its security checks. Cloudflare explains how in Configure a rule with the Skip action.

A skip rule doesn't get past Cloudflare's Bot Fight Mode. If it's on, ask whoever manages Cloudflare to turn it off. Cloudflare explains how in Get started with Bot Fight Mode.

What to send your host

Copy this note and send it to your host or IT team:

Please allow CoSchedule's crawler, CoScheduleBot, to reach our website. Allow requests whose user agent contains "CoScheduleBot", and allow the IP addresses 34.202.82.63 and 52.71.109.154. If a firewall or bot protection service blocks these requests, add a rule that lets them through. Details: https://coschedule.com/support/social-publishing/links/what-coschedulebot-is

WordPress sites that need one fixed address

Some security setups only let in traffic from one fixed address. For a WordPress site, turn on CoSchedule's Static IP Proxy. The steps are in Fix "Could not reach WordPress admin" and firewall problems.

How to identify CoScheduleBot

User agent

CoScheduleBot's user agent always contains "CoScheduleBot". It follows this format:

Mozilla/5.0 (Device; OS_version) AppleWebKit/WebKit_version (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/Chrome_version Safari/Safari_version (CoScheduleBot/CoScheduleBot_version; +https://coschedule.com/coschedulebot)

For example:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/141.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 (CoScheduleBot/1.0; +https://coschedule.com/coschedulebot)

The browser version in the user agent changes from time to time. The CoScheduleBot part stays the same.

Reverse DNS

CoScheduleBot's addresses resolve to hostnames in the coschedulebot.coschedule.com domain. For example, a reverse lookup of 34.202.82.63 returns 34-202-82-63.coschedulebot.coschedule.com, and that hostname resolves back to 34.202.82.63.

What CoScheduleBot requests

CoScheduleBot can request robots.txt, sitemaps, RSS feeds and HTML pages, plus the scripts, images and other files needed to render a page.