Directory/Categories/Verified Bot/webpagetestbot

webpagetestbot

Name: webpagetestbot
Author: Catchpoint

GoodBotCommunity-sourced

An automated agent used by the WebPageTest service to perform performance testing and site speed analysis. Operated by Catchpoint.

GoodBot

Assessment

Verified Bot

What is webpagetestbot?

WebPageTestBot is the dedicated crawler operated by Catchpoint for the WebPageTest platform. It is triggered specifically when a user initiates a performance test on a URL, allowing the service to simulate real-world browser environments to capture metrics like Time to First Byte, Largest Contentful Paint, and total page load time. The bot acts as a controlled client to provide developers with actionable insights into their site's speed and efficiency.

Helpful — It is a legitimate tool used by developers and site owners to measure and optimize web performance.

Identification

Bot name

webpagetestbot

Operator

Catchpoint

Why it crawls your site

The bot crawls websites exclusively at the request of users who are actively testing their own properties or performing competitive analysis. It processes the requested page to generate a waterfall chart and performance report, which are then displayed on the WebPageTest dashboard. You can verify this bot by checking if the source IP belongs to the known WebPageTest infrastructure or by observing that requests only occur when a test is manually triggered via their web interface or API.

IP ranges

Requests from webpagetestbot originate from these published ranges. For strict verification, match the source IP against this list in addition to checking the user-agent and reverse-DNS.

Showing 24 of 34 ranges

Block or allow webpagetestbot

Block it

Add a Disallow rule for webpagetestbot in your robots.txt file. You can also block at the server level using your web server configuration or CDN firewall rules to filter requests matching the user-agent string.

# Block webpagetestbot from crawling your entire site
User-agent: webpagetestbot
Disallow: /

# Allow webpagetestbot full access
User-agent: webpagetestbot
Allow: /