🤖 Overview

Buddy is a legitimate web crawler operated by Buddy Inc., the company behind the Buddy CI/CD and DevOps platform (buddy.works). Its purpose is to monitor website uptime, performance, and availability for users of Buddy's monitoring service. The crawler fetches pages at user-defined intervals to verify correct HTTP responses and measure response times, feeding data into Buddy’s alerting dashboard.

🌐 Technical Behavior

The crawler performs periodic GET requests over HTTPS using HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2, typically every 1 to 60 minutes depending on user configuration. It originates from IP addresses documented at buddy.works/docs/monitoring/ip-addresses (e.g., ranges such as 185.199.108.0/22). The crawler does not execute JavaScript or parse CSS; it only retrieves the raw HTML to check status and timing. Requests include a User-Agent of Buddy/1.0 and optionally a custom identifier. Buddy’s monitoring also supports TCP and SSL checks, but for HTTP it sends a simple GET to the target URL without cookies.

📋 robots.txt Compliance

Per Buddy’s official documentation, the crawler fully respects robots.txt directives. If a Disallow rule applies to the monitored URL, the check is skipped and a compliance notice is shown to the user. There is no evidence that Buddy bypasses robots.txt; it is designed to follow site owner preferences.

🔍 Detection Indicators

The primary indicator is the User-Agent string Buddy/1.0 (or Buddy/2.0 for newer versions). A X-Buddy-Id header may also be present, containing a unique monitor identifier. The IP range is published at buddy.works, and the crawler does not send a referrer header or emulate browser behavior. Its consistent interval and lack of cookies provide additional fingerprints.

📊 Data Usage

Collected data is used exclusively for uptime and performance monitoring. It records HTTP status codes, response times, and SSL certificate expiry. This information triggers alerts via email, Slack, or webhooks when thresholds are exceeded. No personal data is stored, and the crawler does not index content for AI or search purposes.

⚙️ Rate Limiting Policy

Rate-limiting Buddy’s crawler is discouraged because it performs legitimate monitoring that should not be blocked. If the crawler exceeds expected frequency (e.g., due to misconfiguration), operators may apply threshold-based blocking, but Buddy recommends whitelisting its documented IP ranges to avoid false positives.

ⓘ Data Notice: The information presented above has been compiled from publicly available internet sources. Boteraser aggregates this data solely for informational purposes and does not independently classify, evaluate, or endorse any findings about the bots listed. The accuracy and completeness of this information is the sole responsibility of the original publishers. Boteraser and its operators accept no liability for any decisions made based on this data.