Perplexity vs. Cloudflare in 2025: The Battle Over AI Crawlers and Web Defenses

The internet has a new battle going on between Perplexity vs. Cloudflare. Let’s start with Cloudflare, where all things started, the Cloudflare company, which is known for providing cloud services and security on the internet. They make sure that there is nothing wrong happening in things that are under them, and if they feel something unusual, they remove that particular thing, which they did the same with Perplexity.

Cloudflare removed the Perplexity from its network. Now, the perplexity of an official web crawler, or any AI tool for searching, is in doubt, and its loyalty is in doubt. Cloudflare says that this AI is involved in stealth crawling, and they break a lot of their rules. Perplexity also keeps changing its user agent strings, and that makes Perplexity give access to the content, which should be avoided or blocked. Let’s see how this Perplexity vs. Cloudflare war is currently going.

Cloudflare’s “Test” Domains Expose the Issue

There are some websites created by Cloudflare that manage their AI bots and see if they are managing all the rules or not. Those websites are secretexample.com and testexample.com. After all this, Perplexity was still able to share the detailed information from others when the questions were asked to them. And all this was also very surprising for Cloudflare itself because they took every single step to avoid these types of situations.

After an investigation, Cloudflare came to the conclusion that Perplexity was using an undeclared crawler, which helped it behave like a normal browser, which made getting information a little easier for them. When Perplexity vs. Cloudflare things started, Cloudflare blocked all its unwanted activity, and this affected the internet with things, and then it noted that the detailed answers from Perplexity became fewer.

Perplexity’s Defence:

Knowing the perplexity response in Perplexity vs. Cloudflare is another important thing to acknowledge. They said that they never tried any crawl websites. They said that this activity can come from any other browser, which they sometimes use for specific purposes. The company put all the blame on BrowserBase. They said that their AI tools are very different from the web crawlers, and they only visit the website when their users ask for any specific or up-to-date information. Their purpose is only to become the safest and best AI tool, which gives the exact answers to their users.

The company also said that they never saved or used any content in the wrong way; they only used specific things to give detailed information to their users. No data can be misused by them. In Perplexity vs. Cloudflare, Perplexity also criticised Cloudflare for not being able to tell the difference between useful AI things and something that is illegal. They also questioned whether their rule of being fair is categorically followed or not, because they blame Cloudflare for giving it to Perplexity, which is completely invalid according to them.

What’s next?

• Updating the rules: We can see that the current system is not able to tell what a useful real AI is and what is not. We need to update the all rules on the web, which can deal with AI assistants and help in identifying which thing is obeying the rule.
• Clear communication: The companies and the security need to be more communicative with each other to know how they are working. Knowing how the data gets used and having a clear understanding can solve a lot of things.
• Smart security: IF the security managers doubt that there are some people who can hack the whole thing, then it means the security is not at its best. They need to develop better detection tools so that no innocent company can’t be blamed for being a scammer.
• Fair use: AI tools these days are using more live data, which makes the need for clear rules and their management more important. The rules about the criteria and the fair use should be available so the company can know what information they can use and what things they do are considered to cross the line.

Perplexity vs. Cloudflare: Final Act

The Perplexity vs. Cloudflare case creates the tension between the fundamental rule of AI companies. Perplexity challenged the web security management that they are not using the right tool to detect the actual culprit and blame an innocent company that is just using the advanced but safe AI tool, because one wrong decision can have a big impact on any company’s information, even if it gets declared the wrong one after some time. Things need to be more managed, and the security needs to be tight and advanced, so the space for minor mistakes like this does not get left.