How Centinel evaluates automated traffic
Your integration sends request evidence to Centinel. Centinel checks it against your policy and returns a decision. Your CDN, reverse proxy, or application enforces it.
Request a site auditA policy for each crawler.
You decide which bots can reach your site, page by page. Your CDN or WAF stays where it is.
Scrapers retooled. So did we.
We used to build crawlers. Now we test scraping tools and review their behaviour as browsers, proxies, and evasion methods change.
How scrapers retoolNo single check catches a modern scraper
Detection has to weigh the evidence and the resource it protects. Test both the automation decision and the response a legitimate visitor receives.
Evidence from several layers
Request context, crawler identity, and browser and session signals (where collected) feed one decision. No single fingerprint decides it.
Your access policy
Your team sets what each resource allows. The integration applies the decision Centinel returns. Your operators own the policy and review it.
User impact you can test
Include ordinary browsing, accessibility tools, and approved automation in your evaluation. Check challenge completion, latency, and unexpected blocks before widening enforcement.
One call, from the stack you already run
The integration sets where enforcement happens. An edge integration can respond before the request reaches your origin. An application integration enforces inside your server. Test the path you choose, including its timeout and error behaviour.
Where Centinel plugs into your stackYour edge
Sends the request it already has
A supported CDN, reverse proxy, or application integration sends the protected request's context to Centinel. Available connection evidence depends on that integration and any upstream proxy.
Centinel
Decides
Centinel checks the request against your policy and the automation evidence it has. Browser and session signals count only where collection is supported and has run. Direct API clients send no browser payload.
Your edge
Acts on the decision
Serve the page, challenge the visitor, or block the request. Centinel returns only the decision. Your own infrastructure responds to the visitor.
Evidence Centinel uses in a decision
Browser evidence
Supported browser integrations collect runtime and session signals alongside request context.
This adds evidence about clients that send browser-like headers. Coverage depends on where collection runs.
Read more: Browser evidenceClient validation
Centinel checks client-reported properties for tampering and for conflicts with other evidence.
Centinel checks a plausible browser claim against independent evidence. It does not accept the claim on its own.
Read more: Client validationProof of execution
The checks run inside an obfuscated virtual machine whose code paths change on every build.
Proof that the checks ran adds one more condition to the decision. It does not show who operates the browser.
Read more: Proof of executionCrawler identity
Centinel checks a declared crawler name against the IP ranges or reverse DNS that its operator publishes.
Your policy can distinguish verified operators from clients that only copy their names.
Read more: Crawler identity
Detection review
Our team uses request and decision data to investigate suspected bypasses and unexpected blocks.
Review the affected workflow and the impact on legitimate visitors before you change a control.
Threat intelligence
We track the scraping tools and the communities that build them, because we used to be in them.
Changes in those tools tell us which detections to test and which assumptions to review.
Read more: Threat intelligence
Protect the pages scraping costs you most
Start with paid content and the pages your customers sign in to.
- Paid content and downloads
- Account and signup flows
- Search and archive pages
- Comments and community areas
- Checkout and subscription paths
See what reaches your site
A free audit tests which scraping tools can retrieve pages on your domain, then emails the reviewed findings with fixes to consider.