---
title: "What is meta-externalagent? Meta's Bot Explained | Kitbase"
description: "Meta crawler collecting public content to train its AI models and improve Meta products."
canonical: https://kitbase.dev/bot-directory/meta-externalagent
---

[Home](/) [Bot Directory](/bot-directory) meta-externalagent

# meta-externalagent

by Meta

AI training AI UA + IP range

Collects pages in bulk to train a model, unconnected to any individual user's question.

Meta crawler collecting public content to train its AI models and improve Meta products.

## What it usually means

Meta crawled this page as potential training data for its Llama models and AI products.

## How to identify it

User-Agent tokens

`meta-externalagent`

robots.txt stanza

`User-agent: meta-externalagent`

Free tools

[Verify a meta-externalagent request](/tools/bot-verifier?ua=meta-externalagent) [Check if your site allows meta-externalagent](/tools/ai-crawler-access-checker)

## How it's verified

Published IP-range endpoints

-   [https://stat.ripe.net/data/announced-prefixes/data.json?resource=AS32934](https://stat.ripe.net/data/announced-prefixes/data.json?resource=AS32934)

Currently loaded ranges (sample) Refreshed Sep 4, 2026

`163.77.136.0/23``2a03:2880:f37a::/48``185.60.217.0/24``157.240.14.0/24``2a03:2880:f366::/48``2a03:2880:f085::/48``57.145.6.0/23``57.145.16.0/23``57.141.4.0/24``57.144.186.0/23`

1 IP source configured

[Meta's page for meta-externalagent](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers/)

## Sources

-   [Meta crawler docs](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers/)

## More from Meta

[

meta-externalfetcher

Meta fetcher used when a person requests or shares a specific URL.

](/bot-directory/meta-externalfetcher)[

facebookexternalhit

facebookexternalhit is an AI-related crawler operated by Meta.

](/bot-directory/facebookexternalhit)[

meta-externalads

meta-externalads is an AI-related crawler operated by Meta.

](/bot-directory/meta-externalads)[

meta-webindexer

Meta crawler used to improve Meta AI search result quality.

](/bot-directory/meta-webindexer)[

FacebookBot

FacebookBot is an AI-related crawler operated by Meta.

](/bot-directory/facebookbot)

## Similar bots

[

AI2Bot

Allen AI

AI2Bot is an AI-related crawler operated by Allen AI.

](/bot-directory/ai2bot)[

AliyunBot

Alibaba

AliyunBot is an AI-related crawler operated by Alibaba.

](/bot-directory/aliyunbot)[

Applebot-Extended

Apple

Robots token controlling whether Apple may use crawled content for Apple Intelligence training.

](/bot-directory/applebot-extended)[

Bytespider

ByteDance

ByteDance crawler collecting public content used to train its AI models.

](/bot-directory/bytespider)

## See if meta-externalagent has visited your site

Kitbase verifies and tracks bot and AI crawler traffic separately from human visitors, so you know exactly who's hitting your site.

[Start Free Trial](https://app.kitbase.dev/signup)